LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.* 



Chap. 
Shelf 



-C 






0Bi 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



FOUR LECTURES 

ON THE 

DELIVERED IN SOUTHWARD 1834, 

TO THE 

JUNIOR MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 



By JOSEPH JOHN GURNEY. 



^ 



<&* 



&> 



SECOND AMERICAN EDITION. 




HENRY LONGSTRETH, 347 MARKET ST. 

1857. 









* 









INTRODUCTION. 



In presenting to the public the following Lec- 
tures, the editor deems it incumbent upon him, in 
justice to the gentleman who delivered them, to 
make a few explanatory observations respecting 
their publication; and, to account for any errors 
which may be detected by the literary reader, it 
may, perhaps, only be necessary to mention that 
they are printed from the notes of the short-hand 
writer who took them down at the time of their 
delivery. 

Much indeed it is to be regretted, and by no 
one more than the editor, that they have not made 
their appearance with the sanction and revision of 
the learned author; at the same time, it cannot fail 
to strike the intelligent reader that, considering 
their extemporaneous character, these lectures, 
upon subjects which embrace so wide and multi- 
farious a range of observation, both literary and 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

scientific, amply vindicate Mr. Gurney's reputa- 
tion as an eminent Biblical critic; and, though his 
correction while passing through the press would 
have prevented many little defects that now exist 
in the work, it is not improbable that, from his 
appreciation of the importance of the subject, they 
would have been deprived of much of their present 
features as oral discourses. 

Should it be urged by any that their publication 
is needless, as so many learned and valuable works 
connected with Biblical literature have been pre- 
pared for the press, the editor would reply, and 
believes that the experience of most of his readers 
will concur with him, that the mind which may 
feel incapable or indisposed to grapple with the 
arguments of a studied treatise will pleasantly 
listen to the easy, unlaboured eloquence of a viva 
voce lecture. And the unmingled satisfaction ex- 
pressed by those who heard these lectures, the 
editor hopes, will prove a sufficient apology for this 
endeavour to extend their benefit to that very large 
portion of the Society and the public in general 
who had not that advantage. Their simple and 
single aim seems to be to point out and to prove 
how irresistible is the authority, how matchless 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

the beauty, and how adapted to the condition of 
man is the revelation, of the Holy Scriptures. 
And if they conduce, in however trifling a degree, 
to this great end, the editor cannot but believe that 
their esteemed author, however he may have dis- 
liked their unauthorized circulation, will be among 
the first to rejoice at the results. 



1* 



FIRST LECTUEE. 



ON THE 

GENUINENESS AND AUTHENTICITY 

OF THE 

NEW TESTAMENT. 



I should like my young friends to figure to 
themselves the case of a person who is entirely 
unacquainted with the Christian religion, but 
who, nevertheless, is competent to inquire into 
those circumstances and those historical facts 
which prove its truth. I should like them to 
suppose that such a person is provided with a 
copy of the New Testament, and that he should 
take the opportunity of giving it a 4 careful 
perusal. It is quite impossible that a person, 
so circumstanced should fail to be extremely 
struck with the contents of the volume. He 
would find throughout the volume that air of 
simplicity, that naturalness, and that remark- 
able moral and spiritual weight, which would 
at once suggest the truth to him that it is a 

7 



8 LECTURES ON THE 

book of no common order ; nor could lie fail 
to be peculiarly struck by the account con- 
tained in that volume of the wondrous person 
"whose life and death and resurrection and doc- 
trine it so clearly describes, — a person claim- 
ing the divine character, and, at the same time, 
showing forth all human perfections ; and, sup- 
posing him to be a candid inquirer after truth, 
there are two questions which w r ould imme- 
diately arise with him respecting this extra- 
ordinary book, — a book to which the whole 
compass of his literary researches would afford 
him no parallel, — nothing at all comparable to 
it in point of weight, beauty, power, and moral 
cogency : — he would ask himself, in the first 
place, Is this book genuine ? and, in the next 
place, Is this book authentic ? 

I wish my young friends to remark the dis- 
tinction between genuineness and authenticity; 
it is of importance, in all inquiries of the pre- 
sent kind. When we say that a book is genu- 
ine, we mean that it is no forgery ; that it was 
truly written by the persons w r hose names it 
bears, and in the age in which it professes to 
have been produced. When we say that a 
book is authentic, we mean that the contents 
of it are true ; that the history which it con- 
tains, and the circumstances which it relates, 
are truly described, and have really happened. 

Before we inquire into the authenticity of a 
book, and into the truth of the history which 
it relates, the question of its genuineness arises 






EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



in the first instance, and must be disposed of 
before we go further. It so happens, that the 
genuineness of the books of which the New Tes- 
tament is composed has been the subject of 
more critical and more literary inquiry, and of 
a clearer and more elaborate investigation, than 
any books which have ever been written ; and 
the result of that investigation is, indeed, most 
satisfactory. He would be esteemed a fool, or 
at least entirely ignorant, in the critical world 
and among those who are accustomed to scho- 
lastic literature, who would dare, for a moment, 
to dispute the genuineness of the New Testa- 
ment. The plain fact is, that we are in posses- 
sion of evidence of its genuineness unspeakably 
superior to that of any other ancient book what- 
ever, unless, indeed, it be the Old Testament, 
of which I shall soon afterwards speak. 

I do not know whether my young friends are 
acquainted with the method which is usually 
adopted by critics in order to prove the genu- 
ineness of any ancient book. There are vari- 
ous criterions by which it is effected : there are 
external and there are internal evidences. In 
the first place comes the question, Has this book 
been quoted by writers who have lived in sub- 
sequent ages ? is it recognised by persons who 
wrote on the same subject, as the ground of 
what we may now call their science ? Now, we 
find, and we all know, that there is no book so 
largely quoted in the present day, by speakers 
and by writers, on any subject connected with 



10 LECTURES ON THE 

religion, as the New Testament ; and thousands 
and tens of thousands of volumes might now be 
produced, without the smallest difficulty, all of 
which would be found teeming with quotations 
from the New Testament ; but the strength of 
our cause lies here, — that the quotations which 
are made from the New Testament present to 
us a series, which begins in the first century of 
the church of Christ, and of which the only 
termination is to be found in the present day. 
It is not that the New Testament is largely 
quoted now; it is that it was largely quoted 
one thousand six hundred years ago, and quoted 
even to a considerable extent within a few years 
after the book was written. When the Xew 
Testament was composed, — the four Gospels by 
the four Evangelists, and the Epistles by the 
apostles whose names they bear; the book of 
Revelation by the Apostle John, and the book 
of Acts, by Luke, the companion of Paul, — the 
manuscripts which contained the writings were 
circulated by degrees; and they were written 
in the language which then pervaded the civi- 
lized world to a far greater extent than any 
other language. 

You may ask how persons who were accus- 
tomed, generally, to speak the Hebrew and 
Syrian languages, which was the case with 
most of the apostles and Evangelists, should 
write in Greek; and the answer is, that the 
Greek was the pervasive language of the day, 
and was understood both by Jews and Gentiles, 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 11 

to a very large extent ; all their manuscripts, 
therefore, soon obtained a wide circulation; 
and we find quotations from different parts of 
the New Testament, even in the first century. 
Barnabas wrote an epistle, which is not in- 
cluded in the canon of scripture, and does not 
bear the marks of scripture, but which is traced 
by the writers of the first century : this con- 
tains some quotations from the New Testament. 
Clement of Rome lived nearly at the close of 
the first century; he was, in fact, contempo- 
rary with the Apostle Paul, who mentions him, 
and we have some of his genuine productions 
in our hands : he wrote an epistle to the Co- 
rinthians, and, in this epistle, he makes large 
quotations from and plain references to the 
epistle which Paul had written to the same 
church: he says, " Take in your hands the 
Epistle of the Apostle Paul." This they could 
never have done, if the Epistle of Paul had not 
existed; and then he goes on to quote the words 
of Paul. What can be more satisfactory ? what 
can more plainly prove the genuineness of 
Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians? But I 
should like any man to compare with the 
Epistle to the Corinthians all the other epistles 
of Paul, and he will find that they are all writ- 
ten in the same style; in the same inimitable 
mode of thought and composition ; in the same 
peculiar form : and no one can for a moment 
doubt, that if the Epistle to the Corinthians is 
genuine, all the other epistles are genuine also; 



12 LECTURES ON THE 

they all come from the same mind, and from 
the same pen. 

It is an interesting circumstance, that Cle- 
ment of Rome quoted very largely from the 
Epistle to the Hebrews; and, as this epistle is 
anonymous, it is a matter of considerable im- 
portance that we are in possession of a most 
undoubted evidence, in Clement's writings, of 
the existence of that important part of scrip- 
ture in the apostolic age. About the time that 
Clement lived at Rome, Ignatius and Polycarp 
lived in Asia, and they also quoted from the 
Gospels and Epistles, Ignatius particularly. 
We then go on a little further, and we come to 
a very important person, Justin Martyr, who 
lived in the year 147, and wrote a controversy 
with the Jews, on the subject of the Christian 
religion: his works are in our hands; he also 
wrote an Apology for Christianity, addressed 
to the Roman emperor; and in his books w T e 
find quotations, of a most clear and explicit 
nature, and very numerous, both from the Gos- 
pels and Epistles. About the year 170, a man 
of the name of Tatian published a Harmony of 
the Gospels. Of course he could not have 
compared the Gospels together, and put them 
all into one concentrated form, if they had not 
existed and been widely circulated during his 
life. Soon afterwards we come to Clemens of 
Alexandria, and Tertullian, — one in Egypt and 
the other at Carthage, or in the neighbourhood 
of Carthage; and I venture to say, that there 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 13 

are more quotations from the New Testament, 
in the writings of Tertullian alone, than there 
are from the works of Cicero, in all the authors 
who have lived since Cicero, who have taken 
any notice of him : in fact, the New Testament 
is infused into the writings of Tertullian ; and, 
if any one of you would take the trouble of col- 
lecting the quotations from the New Testament, 
you would have almost all the New Testament 
itself: and almost the same observation applies 
to Clemens of Alexandria. While they were 
flourishing, a great luminary appeared in the 
person of Irenaeus, who lived about the year 
17.0. He wrote a book against the heretics of 
the day, and, in order to prove that those 
heretics had taken a false ground, he refutes 
all their opinions from passages of the New 
Testament: his works are also in our hands. 

Then we go forward to Origen, who was a 
man of a very extraordinary character, a Pla- 
tonic philosopher probably, converted to Chris- 
tianity: he lived in Lesser Asia; a man of 
prodigious learning, and whose works are very 
voluminous. They are now in our hands; and 
it is a most satisfactory circumstance that they 
teem with quotations from the Gospels and 
Epistles, and, in fact, from every part both of 
the Old and New Testaments; and what is 
worthy of remark is, that the person against 
whom he wrote, whose name was Celsus, a bit- 
ter enemy to Christianity, freely admits, that 
those writings from which Origen quotes were 
2 



14 LECTURES ON THE 

the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists. 
Now, there are few things more satisfactory 
than the plain testimony of an enemy ; we 
know that there is no partiality in our favour 
here. A bitter enemy to Christianity could 
say nothing against the genuineness of the 
book, so early as the third century : we may 
rest assured, that nothing ever could be said, 
or ever can be said in future, against its genu- 
ineness. After the time of Origen, authors 
multiply on us in every direction : the writings 
of the ancient Fathers are very voluminous, and 
it would be quite in vain to go over the list of 
them ; they are filled with quotations from the 
New Testament, just in the same way as the 
works of modern theologians. But it is worthy 
of remark, that we have not merely quotations 
from the sacred volumes : many of them wrote 
commentaries on it ; and they could not write 
commentaries on a book that did not exist. 
And, what is still more important, others en- 
gaged themselves in producing versions of this 
book in other languages, and some of the ver- 
sions of the New Testament are of a very early 
date. Probably one of the very best versions 
of the New Testament is the Syriac Peschito ; 
and this is traced, by the learned, to the first 
century. It is a most beautiful and literal ver- 
sion of the book, and certainly is not of a later 
date than the second century. During the first 
and second centuries, the old Latin version was 
written ; and modern investigation has brought 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 15 

to light another version, of a very curious kind, 
in the language of Upper Egypt, also supposed 
to have been written in the second century. 

Do not you perceive what amazingly strong 
evidence we have of the genuineness of the 
volume, in those distinct quotations from it, 
made in the first and second centuries? In 
subsequent centuries, the versions were very 
much increased and multiplied. So that we 
have a long, unbroken line of quotations, we 
have commentaries, we have harmonies, we 
have versions ; we have, in fact, a flood of cri- 
tical light, bearing externally on this subject; 
and no man, who is in the least degree ac- 
quainted with this kind of investigation, can 
entertain the smallest doubt of the genuineness 
of the New Testament. However, I wish par- 
ticularly to mention a very great man, who 
arose in the fourth century. His name was 
Eusebius : he lived at Cesarea, in Syria ; was 
a man of prodigious learning, and wrote a his- 
tory of the church; he was extremely fond of 
critical pursuits. About the time when Euse- 
bius lived, (the year 315 after Christ,) the books 
of the New Testament were very largely circu- 
lated in the hands of friends and enemies : they 
were distributed in Asia, Africa, and Europe, — 
in short, in every part of the Roman empire. 
They were read by persons of every persuasion. 
Christianity was at that time making rapid way 
through the whole boundaries of the Roman 
empire, and became the established religion of 



16 LECTURES ON THE 

the Roman empire within ten years of the time 
of Eusebius. At that time Eusebius, the very 
prince of critics, one of the most deliberate and 
learned of inquirers in reference to this subject, 
in speaking of the books of the New Testament, 
says, that "the four Gospels, the book of Acts, 
the Epistles of Paul, the First Epistle of Peter, 
and the First of John, were, at that time, uni- 
versally allowed to be genuine productions : 
these are by far the greater part of the whole 
volume." And, notwithstanding the great ex- 
tent to which it was circulated, there was but 
one unanimous feeling, — a sentiment among 
both friends and enemies ; his expressions are, 
"that they are universally confessed to be 
genuine;" and then he mentions (and it shows 
the precision with which he inquired into the 
subject, and that he took nothing on trust) that 
there were some persons who had raised doubts 
respecting the Second and Third Epistles of 
John, the books of Revelation, of Peter, and 
James ; but he gives plain evidence that those 
are also genuine. In the year 365, there was 
a general conclave of the bishops of the Chris- 
tian church, held at Laodicea, where they finally 
inquired into that subject, and came to a unani- 
mous decision, that the whole canon of the New 
Testament, as we now receive it, was a genuine 
canon. Every part of it was proved to be 
genuine ; and at the same time (and it shows the 
precision with which they inquired) they rejected 
a variety of spurious Gospels ; for there were 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 17 

circulated spurious imitations of the true Gos- 
pels, and of the Epistles of Paul : — and I should 
like very much for my young friends, who wish 
to go into the subject, to compare the genuine 
Gospels and Epistles with those spurious imita- 
tions, — if they can be called imitations which 
imitate only by a kind of mockery. You can- 
not read a single page of the New Testament 
without feeling, in your own minds, a certainty 
and a conviction, which you cannot get rid of, 
that what you read is genuine. You cannot 
read a single page of the spurious productions 
without being immediately satisfied that they 
are spurious ; the whole tenor and manner of 
them are totally different. In point of fact, 
all those spurious productions were soon ban- 
ished from the church, and are now forgotten 
and rarely heard of ; but they are still in the 
hands of literary men, and prove their own 
falsity by their internal weakness. 

These external evidences, which are so nume- 
rous, so harmonious, and so strong, far beyond 
those which are brought to bear on any other 
ancient book in the world, are supported by in- 
ternal evidences of the most precise and de- 
finite character. The first of these, (and I ap- 
peal to the memories of my young friends as I 
go .on— I hope you will write down these things . 
on the tablet of the memory : they are worth 
remembering,) and main internal evidence of 
the genuineness of the New Testament, is the 
language in which it is written. That lan- 
2* 



18 LECTURES ON THE 

guage, as I told you before, was Greek ; but it 
was Greek of a peculiar kind ; it was Greek re- 
plete with Hebrew idioms. With the single 
exception of the works of Luke, who was himself 
a Grecian, the whole of the New Testament is 
written in Hebrew-Greek; the language which 
a Jew could write, and only a Jew. You know 
that after the first century there were no Jew- 
ish Christians, or scarcely any at all, — none 
that we know of; and the Fathers of the Greek 
church, who wrote in common Greek, were no 
more capable of writing the Greek of the New 
Testament, than you would be of writing any 
language quite foreign to you. It is quite cer- 
tain that there were, no other Christians capable 
of writing the language in which the New Tes- 
tament is written, except during the apostolic, 
age itself; and here is a broad internal evidence 
of the most important character. But again : 
there is nothing by which a spurious book is so 
well detected, as by its anachronisms ; that is 
to say, by its containing an account of circum- 
stances which are proved, by subsequent and 
collateral investigation, not to have happened 
at the time of that history to which the book 
professes to relate ; and these spurious Gospels 
are all of them disproved by the most absurd 
anachronisms respecting their chronology. But 
the New Testament, although it has been in the 
hands of investigators for so many ages, is not 
found to contain a single absurdity or anachron- 
ism of this description. 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 19 

The history of the New Testament tallies in 
all its points with the profane history of the 
time ; and the accounts which it contains, of the 
manners of the Jews, of the customs of the Ro- 
mans, of the Roman governors, of the Roman 
laws, and of a variety of other particulars, since 
then proved, are all found to coincide, with the 
most beautiful precision, with the accounts that 
we find respecting the Jews in the works of Jo- 
sephus, in the first century ; and with accounts 
which we find of the history and manners of the 
Romans, in their own authors. What can ac- 
count for this harmony? Nothing can but the 
genuineness of the book. Now, judge as a spe- 
cimen, and here is a point which bears both 
upon its genuineness and upon its authenticity 
or truth ; you are aware how many individuals 
are mentioned in the New Testament, attaching 
to. the family of Herod. I will venture to say, 
that there was no family, whose actions are re- 
corded in ancient history, so intricate as the 
family of Herod, or scarcely any ; a variety of 
individuals, under peculiar circumstances, bear- 
ing the name of Herod, and therefore very 
great confusion in their history, — Herod the 
Great, Herod Archelaus and his brethren, and 
Herod Agrippa ; and several others ; and their 
history is interwoven in a very peculiar manner, 
and it is exceedingly difficult to pick it out, 
though it may be done, from the works of Jo- 
sephus. All these Herods are named in the 
New Testament, and in a very natural manner; 



20 LECTURES ON THE 

and we find, when we compare it side by side 
with the information respecting the Herod 
family contained in Josephus, that the two per- 
fectly tally together ; and nothing can account 
for the fact but the truth of both histories. 

So much for the genuineness of the New 
Testament; and it is really delightful to be 
able to say, that there is no ancient book exist- 
ing in any language, of which the genuineness 
is so largely and so satisfactorily demonstrated 
as that of the Gospels and Epistles, and every 
part of the New Testament. 

Then we come to the question of its authen- 
ticity. I will suppose that the inquirer after 
truth, having investigated the subject with a 
critical eye, is fully satisfied in his own mind 
that the book is genuine : he says, " Well, but 
is the book true?" Why, the very fact that 
the book itself is genuine, and written by the 
persons whose names it bears, affords a strong 
prima facie evidence that the book is true. 
When we have proved the genuineness of the 
works of Livy, Cicero, and Tacitus, we do not 
think of disputing the truth of their histories; 
we take it for granted, in the common order of 
things, that Livy, and Cicero, and Tacitus, 
were men of respectability and truth, (as they 
certainly were,) and therefore, without any fur- 
ther inquiry, we receive their works as true 
without the smallest difficulty, (and the same 
with respect to Xenophon, Thucydides, and all 
the ancient historians,) and entertain no diffi- 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 21 

culty on the subject. But there is one ground 
on which the authenticity or truth of the his- 
tory contained in the New Testament demands 
a more close and precise investigation ; namely, 
— so many parts of that history are miraculous ; 
and therefore an inquirer into truth (such as I 
suppose on the present occasion) might fairly 
demand an extraordinary amount of evidence 
to prove the authenticity of the New Testa- 
ment. 

Now, with that extraordinary amount of evi- 
dence we are perfectly prepared to furnish him; 
and I would just say, that this is ground which 
has been travelled over by the profoundest and 
most enlightened reasoners that ever lived; and 
in a very especial manner by Bacon, Locke, and 
Newton : and those men, w r ho were not likely 
to be deceived by a mere shadow and semblance 
of truth, were all of them entirely satisfied of 
the truth of the New Testament. In point of 
fact, there is a great body of evidence on the 
subject, and no man who goes into it with an 
impartial mind can fail to arise from the inves- 
tigation with that mind entirely satisfied of the 
truth of the gospel history. In the first place, 
he will observe the confirmation of the truth of 
that history which is contained in the writings 
of historians who had no connection with Chris- 
tians : this is a very interesting line of inquiry. 
The works of Josephus afford a great deal of 
evidence of this description. I have just alluded 
to the history of the Herod family ; how admi- 



22 LECTURES ON THE 

rably it may be made out by comparing it with 
the history of Josephus, and so with many other 
particulars mentioned : the names of the go- 
vernors, of the high-priests, and so on, are 
clearly related by Josephus. Among the Ro- 
man historians we have evidence of a precise 
and very interesting character, and especially 
in the writings of Tacitus. He tells us an ex- 
traordinary story ; j he was writing the life of 
Nero, who lived in the year 64 after Christ ; 
and he tells us that Nero, amidst his mad and 
wicked actions, set the city of Rome on fire for 
his amusement, and then, in order to save him- 
self from the reproach and obloquy which this 
action occasioned, he ascribed the burning of 
Rome to the poor Christians, of whom he tells 
us there were large numbers at Rome. I ima- 
gine it could not be that many of the Christians 
were at that time at Rome, unless the history 
of Christ be true. He goes on, however, to 
tell us that the Christians derive their name 
from one Christ, who was put to death by Pon- 
tius Pilate, the Governor of Judea, in the reign 
of the Emperor Tiberius; and since that his 
religion had spread in various parts of the Ro- 
man empire : so that the account of the life of 
Christ, the death of Christ, the precise date 
when our Saviour lived, the name of the Roman 
governor by whom he was put to death, the 
name of the emperor who lived in that time, and 
the early spread of his religion, are all related 
by that authentic historian, Tacitus ! There is. 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 23 

a small testimony in the works of Suetonius, 
and another in Lucian ; but I know of no Ro- 
man writer who affords a more interesting and 
delightful light on this subject than Pliny the 
Younger, who lived in the time of the Emperor 
Trajan, about the year 100. His letter to 
Trajan respecting the Christians was written in 
the year 107 : he was governor of the province 
of Bithynia, in Lesser Asia, a man of letters 
and good intelligence, and appears to have pos- 
sessed some feeling too. His letters are distin- 
guished by a peculiar elegance : he was em- 
ployed by the Emperor Trajan, who was by no 
means one of the worst of the emperors, in the 
wretched work of persecuting the Christians ; 
for it appears that this emperor, like some of 
his predecessors and some of his successors, 
was set on exterminating the race of Christians. 
Pliny writes a letter to the emperor, complain- 
ing of the difficulty of the task, and begging 
for further instructions. He says that this de- 
praved superstition, as he is pleased to call it, 
has spread on every side ; that there is no pos- 
sibility of stopping it ; that it was not only to 
be found in the towns, but even in little villages 
and country-places ; that the temples of the 
gods were so entirely forsaken that there was 
found no market for victims, and in fact the 
whole country was seized, as it were, by 
the Christian religion : and he tells us further 
that upon inquiry he could find no fault with 
the people, for they committed no offence 



24 LECTURES ON THE 

against the government, and the only plea on 
which he could satisfy himself that they were 
worthy of death was this, viz. : they were so 
exceedingly obstinate, that nothing could induce 
them to renounce their faith ; but, as for their 
conduct and actions, they were a quiet and in- 
nocent people, and were accustomed to meet 
on a stated day every week before daylight and 
to worship God together, and to sing hymns to 
Christ as to God, (these are his words ;) and, 
further, that they would bind themselves, by a 
solemn obligation, not to rebel against the em- 
pire ; not to pull down the established order of 
things in a civil point of view; not to rob their 
neighbours, or to injure any man, but to do 
justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
their God, describing in his own language 
several plain Christian virtues, and especially 
those of temperance and chastity. This is the 
character he gives them ; and then he says they 
used to meet again for a social meal in the 
course of the day. This was all he could say 
of them, and he begged to know whether the 
emperor would require him to go on with the 
persecution. Do you not perceive what an 
amazing deal of evidence is here ? You have 
in the first place a proof of the character, and 
in the next, a proof of the numbers and pre- 
valence, of Christians ; and when you consider 
that in embracing Christianity they embraced 
the furnace, the fagot, the sword, the torment, 
and the stake ; when you consider that in em- 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 25 

bracing Christianity they renounced their fami- 
lies, their homes, their fortune, and their friends ; 
when you consider that in embracing Chris- 
tianity they gave up all their old habits — the 
habits of the Jews and Gentiles, inveterate as 
they were — and adopted a set of habits which 
were naturally foreign to their minds and edu- 
cation ; — I say, when you take all this into 
view, and look at their numbers and prevalence 
all over the country, I think we must all agree 
that this could not possibly have been the case 
if the history contained in the New Testament 
had not been a true history. So much for 
written testimonies ; now for the testimony of 
the apostles themselves. 

What a very great charm it gives to a book, 
and what very great reliance we have on the 
authenticity of a book, when the history which 
it contains is written by an eye and ear wit- 
ness ! What a peculiar authenticity attaches, 
for instance, to Bishop Burnet's History of his 
Own Times, and Lord Clarendon's history ! 
Probably some of my young friends have read 
those books. I venture to say it is impossible 
for any man to read one of those books written 
by an eye-witness of the scenes they describe, 
without feeling an innate conviction that what 
he reads is true. We like to hear things from 
an eye or an ear witness, especially when they 
have the reputation of being honest men. Now, 
Matthew and John are eye-witnesses; and if 
any one will take the Gospel of Matthew, and 
a 



26 LECTURES ON THE 

take the Gospel of John, and observe how they 
are interwoven one with another, and how com- 
pletely harmonious the history of the two Gos- 
pels is when put together, he will find here the 
testimony of two eye and ear witnesses which 
will afford the most satisfactory evidence to the 
human mind. You remember the beginning 
of John's Epistle ; he says, " What we have 
seen with our eyes, what we have heard with 
our ears, what our hands have handled of the 
word of life, these things we declare unto you ;" 
— and, although Mark and Luke in their Gos- 
pels do not stand as eye and ear witnesses 
themselves, Luke was the companion of Paul 
the apostle, and Mark the favorite companion 
of Peter ; and therefore they had their history 
from those who were intimately versed in all 
the scenes which they described ; and in the 
case of Mark, from one of the apostles who was 
most favoured by our Lord during his life ! 
Take the book of Acts, and there again you 
have an eye and an ear witness — Luke — -de- 
scribing what he saw in the course of his travels 
with the Apostle Paul. The next point is to 
take these four Gospels and observe their har- 
mony : taking more particularly Matthew and 
John, the two Gospels of two eye-witnesses, you 
will find a perfect harmony between those two 
Gospels ; and yet there is that apparent diver- 
sity about some little matters which proves that 
they were independent witnesses. Let us sup- 
pose we were in a court of justice, and that the 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 27 

witnesses were brought forward one after 
another : the first thing a jury would look at 
would be the independence of the witnesses, 
and if they find them looking at some little 
matters in a different point of view, and stating 
them in a different manner, it would be a most 
satisfactory circumstance, because such a variety 
would prove the independence of the witnesses : 
and just such a variety is to be found in the 
four Gospels ; and if any one would make a 
point of examining the little circumstances on 
which they seem to differ from one another, 
while their substantial agreement could be 
proved, they would all be found to agree in the 
main points; though one man sees one angel, 
and another two, and so on. Here is a plain 
and unquestionable proof of their independence ; 
and therefore, when you take the four inde- 
pendent writers, — writers proved to be inde- 
pendent by their variety, — and find that they 
are all in close, substantial harmony, and that 
they interweave one with another in the most 
beautiful and natural manner, you have a proof 
of the truth of their history which no man can 
shake. 

Now, of the kind of coincidence which I 
mean, I would just give you a specimen. Mat- 
thew, in describing the sufferings of our Lord 
in the garden of Gethsemane, describes our 
Lord's words in prayer when he says, " If it be 
possible, let this cup pass from me," and again, 
" If this cup may not pass away from me except 



28 * LECTURES ON THE 

I drink it, thy will be done." Turn to John, 
and you will find no account of this part of the 
scene ; but when the officers of the high-priest 
are described by John as coming to surprise 
him in the garden, and when Peter drew his 
sword and cut off the ear of Malchus, what are 
the words of Jesus? — "Put thy sword in thy 
sheath : the cup which my Father hath given 
me, shall I not drink it?" Now, do not you 
perceive how exactly the narrative of John 
coincides with the account given by Matthew, 
so that the idea of the cup he was to drink was 
still dwelling in the mind of our Saviour ? and 
here the truth comes out in all its simplicity 
and beauty. A vast variety of these instances 
might easily be mentioned : they are peculiarly 
striking when we compare the book of Acts 
with the Epistles of Paul. The book of Acts 
describes the acts of Paul ; the Epistles contain 
his writings ; and I will venture to say that no 
man can compare the acts of Paul with the 
Epistles of Paul, deliberately and carefully, 
without being plainly convinced that the Epis- 
tles are genuine, and the Acts true. The coin- 
cidences to which I allude are not of a striking 
nature ; not of a marked, conspicuous character : 
they are oblique ; they are incidental ; they 
arise, as it were, by accident. For example, 
you find in the book of Acts an account of 
Paul and Barnabas going out together on a 
journey and falling out by the way. And why 
did they fall out ? Because Barnabas wanted 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 29 

to take Mark with him, who had deserted them 
on a former occasion, and Paul did not think it 
right. We do not know why that happened ; 
but turn to one of the Epistles of Paul, and 
you will find it stated of Mark, that he was 
sister's son to Barnabas, so that Mark w T as Bar- 
nabas's own nephew. Here is the truth glim- 
mering out, as it were, and no man can doubt 
it to be true. You may recollect what he says 
about Timothy in the Acts, that he was well 
reported of, that he had a Jewish mother and a 
Greek father; and a good deal is said about 
his submission to the Jewish ceremonies. Turn 
to the epistle to Timothy ; there is no direct 
mention of his having a Greek father and Jew- 
ish mother, but the apostle, in an incidental, 
oblique, truthlike manner, speaks of the un- 
feigned faith which dwelt first in his mother 
Eunice, and his grandmother Lois. What 
faith ? Faith in the religion of the Old Testa- 
ment ; therefore they were Jews. And further 
he says, " From a child thou hast known the 
Holy Scriptures." How came he to know them 
from a child ? Because his mother did her duty 
and taught him the Scriptures. Here is an 
oblique coincidence, which nothing can account 
for but the truth and genuineness of the books. 
I was once conversing with a very eminent 
person, the present Lord-Chancellor,* on this 
subject, (who we must all allow to be a good 

* Lord Brougham. 
3* 



30 LECTURES ON THE ■ 

judge of evidence ;) and I was very glad to hear 
him say, in a very large circle of company, that 
Paley's Horse Paulinse was perfect evidence. 
Now, that book is a comparison between the 
book of Acts and the Epistles of Paul ; and I 
was really rejoiced to hear a man who has some- 
times, I believe, been accused of doubts on the 
subject, plainly declare in the face of a large 
party that it was a book of evidence. Well, if 
that is perfect evidence, Christianity is true, 
and there is an end to the whole question; for, 
if the book of Acts is true, the whole is true, 
for the miraculous part of the book of Acts is 
sufficient to prove the divine origin of our holy 
religion. 

I now wish to bring to view certain coinci- 
dences between the contents of the New Testa- 
ment and profane authors, of the same oblique 
character, and therefore the more indicative of 
truth, and also of certain circumstances which 
have lately arisen, which develop the truth of 
the New Testament. In the 17th chapter of 
Acts, where Paul visits Athens, he finds altars 
"to the unknown God," — a very remarkable 
circumstance ; and then he addresses them in 
the Areopagus on the plain of Mars, (which 
was the place where they met for the purposes 
of justice,) and says, " The God whom ye igno- 
rantly worship, him declare I unto you." Now, 
there is an ancient Greek author of the name 
of Philostratus, who describes certain circum- 
stances which happened in the city of Athens 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 31 

about three hundred years before Christ, I be- 
lieve. A great plague arose in the city, and 
the inhabitants were exposed to great diffi- 
culties ; at last the plague was stayed, and 
(says the history) Epimenes caused altars to be 
raised in different parts of Athens in honour 
of the unknown Deity by whom the plague 
was stayed. What a beautiful though won- 
drous coincidence ! how satisfactory ! Who 
that was forging a history would think of an 
enemy's authors ? but it is mentioned in the 
book of Acts, and that with a sort of candour 
for which nothing but truth can account. But, 
you may say, this evidence applies in a par- 
ticular manner to those parts of the history 
which are not miraculous. Many of them do ; 
there was nothing miraculous about Timothy, 
nor in those altars ; but if you read the New 
Testament you will find the miraculous parts in 
every portion of it interwoven so naturally, in- 
terwoven so entirely yet clearly, that you can- 
not sever them ; and, taking the groundwork as 
true, you cannot get rid of the truth of the 
other part of it. You find the whole goes to- 
gether, and must go together : in proving the 
truth of the history, you prove the truth of the 
miracles as well as all things else. But it so 
happens that even here is evidence bearing on 
the specific point, bearing specifically on the 
miraculous portion, and proving that the mi- 
raculous part of the history is true. Celsus, 
that bitter enemy to Christianity, not only al- 



32 LECTURES ON THE 

lows in his writings (which Origen quotes from) 
that the New Testament was written by its sup- 
posed authors, but he clearly acknowledges that 
the miraculous parts really took place. Here 
is an acknowledged evidence, the evidence of 
an enemy, of an enemy of comprehensive mind; 
he acknowledges the miracles were true, and he 
tries to get out of a scrape by pretending that 
they w r ere caused by magic. In the same way 
the Jewish enemies of Christianity bore testi- 
mony to the truth of the Christian miracles ! I 
suppose you have all heard of the Talmud, — a 
very curious book written by Jewish doctors in 
the second and third centuries, and some part 
of it earlier ; it has two parts, the Mishna, 
which contains all the Jewish traditions, and 
the Gemara, which is a commentary; and the 
whole is a very voluminous work in Talmudic 
Hebrew, very difficult to read. In this Talmud 
there is an attack on Christianity, and those 
Jewish doctors acknowledge that the miracles 
of Jesus Christ were true miracles : and they 
get rid of the difficulty, just as their forefathers 
did, by ascribing them to Beelzebub. This, 
you know, is a poor method, for a house divided 
against itself cannot stand ; still, there is the 
evidence of the enemies of Christianity to the 
truth of the miracles. Then again there is a 
very curious evidence in the w r orks of Justin 
Martyr : he wrote a public apology for Chris- 
tianity, addressed to the Roman emperor, An- 
toninus Pius; and in this apology — a public 






EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 33 

production, addressed to the highest magistrate 
of the state — he makes his appeal to certain 
records which were in the hands of the emperor, 
and were in the archives of Rome, in which 
were recorded the acts of Pontius Pilate. Now, 
it was known to be the practice of Roman 
governors of that day to send home a journal 
of all the particular events, w T hich have been 
called the u acts of Pontius Pilate," or of any 
other. "Well," says he, " examine the acts of 
Pilate, — I know that they are in your hands, I 
know they are in the archives of the Roman 
empire, — and there you will find a precise ac- 
count of the miracles and resurrection of Jesus 
Christ." Now, can any man suppose that 
Justin Martyr, who was a great philosopher 
and a wise man, would be so foolish as to ap- 
pend the whole weight of his argument on a 
point which the emperor could have refuted in 
a moment if it had not been true? There can 
be no question that those acts actually existed ; 
that they were in the archives of the Roman 
empire, and did contain an account of our Sa- 
viour and his resurrection. So that we have 
abundant evidence afforded us by the enemies of 
the truth; and no evidence is better. 

But now let us take the evidence of the 
friends of truth. Not only the four writers of 
the Gospels, but all the apostles, were wit- 
nesses of the miracles and resurrection of Jesus 
Christ ; and they went forth in every part of 
the civilized world, and even beyond its limits, 



34 LECTURES ON THE 

as witnesses, not merely of certain doctrines, 
but of certain facts on which those doctrines 
were built. I think we have abundant evidence 
that these men — these twelve men, taking Mat- 
thias instead of Judas — could not by any pos- 
sibility be deceived about the miracles, in the 
first place ; and then I will show you that they 
could not be deceivers, and you will judge what 
the alternative must be. That they could not 
be deceived you may judge from this circum- 
stance: — that these men were slow of heart to 
believe the things they did see, remarkable for 
their incredulity, as they state respecting them- 
selves, acknowledging their own weakness; 
men very cautious in the reception of facts, 
which is evident in their history. And, in the 
next place, what were the facts ? They were 
facts to which they were all witnesses. Could 
they by any possibility be deceived when, for 
instance, the leper, covered with a loathsome 
and incurable disease from head to foot, cast 
himself prostrate on the ground before Jesus, 
in presence of his disciples? "If thou wilt, 
thou canst make me clean. " "I will; be thou 
clean;" and immediately his leprosy was 
cleansed. Could any man be deceived in 
this fact ? An eye-witness, a deliberate eye- 
witness, could not be deceived about that. Was 
it evidence to be mistaken for a moment, when 
Lazarus had been lying in his grave four days, 
beginning to putrefy ; when a whole company 
surrounded the grave ; when the apostles were 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 35 

all about our Saviour, when the grave was 
opened, when the language was uttered, " La- 
zarus, come forth," and immediately he that 
was dead came forth bound hand and foot? 
Here was a fact in which, no eye-witness could 
possibly be deceived. But take the main fact 
to which they bear testimony, and look at it 
for a short time, — the resurrection of our Lord 
himself. I will venture to say, that there is no 
fact recorded in ancient history, of which we 
are in possession of such satisfactory evidence, 
as the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
His death, you know, is not only recorded by 
the evangelists, but by the Roman historians, 
as I have mentioned, and also by Josephus, as 
he has done his resurrection in one passage, 
which we have every reason to consider genuine. 
Call to mind the extreme publicity of the death 
of our Lord Jesus Christ ; remember the repu- 
tation that he had obtained among all the 
people ; remember the mighty multitudes who 
followed after him into the wilderness ; think 
of the amazing effect which his doctrine, and 
all the miracles he wrought, must have pro- 
duced on the minds of the people in general : 
then remember that he was betrayed into the 
hands of his enemies ; that he was crucified on 
Mount Calvary ; that the circumstance was of 
the most notorious description. And when did 
it take place ? During the feast of the Pass- 
over, when thousands and tens of thousands of 
Jews from every part of the country were as- 



36 LECTURES ON THE 

sembled at Jerusalem. And at what time of 
day ? At noonday : for three noonday-hours — 
from twelve to three — he remained on the cross, 
two notorious criminals being crucified at the 
same time. Now, we are all perfectly well 
aware, even in this country, of the publicity of 
these scenes, and of the vast multitudes of 
people thronging to witness them ; and we have 
no doubt that all Jerusalem, as we may say, 
was poured out to witness the public death of 
our Lord. No event was ever more public — 
no event was ever more marked — than the 
death of Jesus Christ on the cross : and it is a 
very remarkable circumstance, that there was 
also a peculiar investigation into this subject as 
it happened in the order of Providence. You 
know the day that was to come next w r as a high 
Sabbath, and the Jews were anxious that the 
legs of the criminals, as they called them, 
should be broken, that their death should be . 
accomplished and their bodies be removed be- 
fore the coming in of the Sabbath. Pilate 
sends his soldiers for the purpose, and, when 
they come and examine Jesus, they brake not 
his legs : and why ? For he was dead already. 
They came and examined him, and found him 
dead; and then, with a sort of wanton bar- 
barity, they plunged a spear into his side, and 
there came thereout blood and water ; and 
therefore we may rest assured, that even if 
death had not taken place, death must have 
taken place after the infliction of that addi- 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 37 

tional wound. So that there is the most pre- 
cise and marked evidence of the fact. Well, 
he is committed to the tomb of Joseph of Ari- 
mathea; the seal of the Roman governor is 
placed on the tomb ; the soldiers of the Roman 
government are posted as watchers ; at the ap- 
pointed hour the seal is broken ; the watchers 
are scattered ; the stone is removed ; the Lord 
is risen : the angel in white (or two angels) is 
found sitting in the sepulchre; Jesus appears 
first to Mary and converses with her ; then to 
Peter; then to the two disciples, as they were 
going to Emmaus; that same evening, being 
the first day of the week, to the ten apostles, 
(Thomas Didymus not being there ;) on the fol- 
lowing week to all the apostles, including Didy- 
mus ; then, as Paul testifies in the 15th chapter 
of the 1st Corinthians, to five hundred brethren 
at once ; and all those persons were witnesses 
of our Lord's resurrection. And he was sub- 
jected to close personal examination ; that 
doubter, Thomas — that man who would not be- 
lieve unless he saw with his own eyes, who 
would not believe unless he saw the wounds, the 
print of the nails in his hands and feet, and 
his wound in his side, — our Saviour showed him 
his hands ; his finger was put into the prints of 
the nails ; his hand was put into the side of our 
wounded Saviour; he was personally examined: 
and I will say that, without this examination, 
with all those facts before them, the apostles 
could not possibly be deceived as to that fact. 
4 



38 LECTURES ON THE 

It is morally impossible, even if one man could 
by any strong delusion of vision have been 
deceived in so ostensible and obvious a fact as 
this, that twelve men could by any possibility 
be deceived. 

Whether then we take our Saviour's resur- 
rection, or the principal miracles which he 
wrought on other occasions ; when we consider 
the character of the apostles in the first place, 
and the nature of the miracles in the second 
place, I think that we must all come to this 
conclusion: — that it is absolutely impossible 
the disciples could be deceived by them. Now, 
could they be deceivers? — though they were 
not deceived themselves, could they deceive 
others ? What proof have we that they could 
not be deceivers ? In the first place, examine 
the internal evidence of the gospel history ; the 
remarkable candour which they display in tell- 
ing their own faults, and the humiliating cir- 
cumstances which they give ; how plainly they 
tell them all : and, in the second place, their 
doctrine is the subject of truth. There were 
never persons who bore so high an esteem for 
truth as the evangelists and apostles : truth was 
their motto, their joy, their strength ; and they 
tell us that all liars have their part in the lake 
of fire and brimstone. But, while that is their 
doctrine, while their master is called the Truth, 
by way of eminence ; while truth is the main 
pillar of the Christian character, in their view 
of it, we test their veracity by their conduct: 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 39 

those men sacrificed their property, their fami- 
lies, their leisure, their privileges, their habits, 
and finally their lives ; for what purpose ? That 
they might bear testimony to those facts they 
saw. I will say that there is no impossibility 
in natural philosophy greater than the moral 
impossibility that twelve men of established 
character for veracity and for good conduct; 
that twelve men of such a character, and such 
a profession, should sacrifice all they held dear 
in life for the purpose of propagating that which 
they knew to be false. There are realities in 
the moral world which are just as certain and 
just as unquestionable as the realities in the 
natural world; and it is just as impossible that 
twelve men should give up their lives for the 
purpose of bearing testimony to a lie, as it is 
that a river should alter its course, and run up- 
wards instead of downwards ; and therefore I 
consider it is proved, in the plainest and most 
unquestionable manner, that these twelve men, 
in bearing testimony to the miracles and resur- 
rection of Christ, could not be deceived, and 
also that they could not be deceivers. What 
is the alternative ? There is but one : namely, 
that the history which they related is true. 
And now let me advert for a moment to the 
peculiar testimony of the Apostle Paul. He 
says, "Last of all he was seen of me also, as 
of one born out of due time." When and 
where was he seen by the Apostle Paul ? Do 
you want one circumstance which establishes 



40 LECTURES ON THE 

the truth of the Christian religion ? You will 
find that circumstance in the miraculous con- 
version of the Apostle Paul : it is an argument 
beautifully developed by the late Lord Lyttle- 
ton in a work expressly written on that subject. 
The Apostle Paul leaves Jerusalem in the 
character of a fierce persecutor ; a bigot in all 
the bigotry of the Pharisees, brought up at 
the feet of Gamaliel ; zealous for the letter 
of the law ; bound hand and foot by the cere- 
monial and Mosaic institutions; and fierce as 
the cruel beasts of prey, in pursuing the un- 
offending Nazarenes even unto death. In the 
course of his journey he is arrested in a mo- 
ment by a light and by a voice from heaven : — 
"Saul! Saul! why persecutest thou me? It 
is hard for thee to kick against the pricks." 
"Who art thou, Lord?" he asks, and is an- 
swered, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest." 
There was a divine hand on that man : he did 
not disobey the heavenly vision; and in the 
course of one short moment, as it were, this 
fierce, this bigoted, this relentless persecutor 
of the unoffending Christians was converted 
into the humble, obedient, believing servant of 
the Lord Jesus Christ. There, friends, is a 
miracle in itself, which abundantly establishes 
the truth of our religion. But further, this 
apostle, like the other apostles, was himself 
endued with a power of working miracles ; not 
in his own name, not in his own strength, but 
in the name of the Lord Jesus : he went with 



' 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 41 

them, confirming their doctrine by signs follow- 
ing. Now turn to the Epistle to the Corinth- 
ians, and you will discover in that epistle (which 
we have already found to be genuine, which is 
a public document addressed to a public body) 
these words: — " Truly the signs of an apostle 
were wrought among you in all patience, in 
signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds." If he 
had written to the Ephesians about the miracles 
which he had wrought at Corinth, we might 
suppose that there was no evidence to the Ephe- 
sians of his having done so, — that it might be 
possibly false ; but he further goes on and tells 
the Corinthians about the wonders which they 
themselves were enabled to perform ; for it was 
a day of miracles : the day which established 
Christianity in the world was marked by many 
coincidences with the announcing of the new 
doctrine. Now, that the Apostle Paul, in a 
public document addressed to the Corinthians, 
should make mention of the miracles which he 
had wrought in their presence, and of the mira- 
cles which they were enabled to work them- 
selves, and, supposing for a moment that those 
things had not taken place, can you conceive a 
greater folly, can you conceive a circumstance 
which would more immediately bring upon him 
the rebuke of being a deceiver, and therefore 
wholly unworthy of credit? Taking into ac- 
count that the Apostle Paul was neither a mad- 
man nor a fool, we are quite sure that those 
miracles were really performed, and therefore 
4* 



42 LECTURES ON THE 

we are sure that Christianity is true. Once 
more let me allude to the marvellous spread of 
Christianity in every part of the Roman em- 
pire ; that within twenty years or thirty years 
of the death of Christ, in the reign of Nero, 
there were multitudes of Christians at Rome ; 
that by the end of the first century the whole 
of Lesser Asia was pervaded by them, as it 
were ; churches were planted on every side, — 
in Phoenicia, Italy, Gaul, and Africa; and in 
the course of the fourth century, in the year 
325, Christianity became the established reli- 
gion of the Roman empire. And when you 
remember, at the same time, that the religion 
which was thus disseminated was opposed to all 
the habits of the Jews and to all the practices 
of the Gentiles, to all their prejudices, to all 
their systems, to all their pleasures, and for a 
long season exposed its advocates to innume- 
rable sufferings, I will say that you cannot pos- 
sibly account for these facts otherwise than by 
the truth of the Gospels, and of the miracles 
and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
And now, with regard to the resurrection, I 
have one more evidence to produce. There is 
a silent testimony borne to the truth of the re- 
surrection of Jesus Christ, by a witness which 
has gone on bearing its testimony for eighteen 
hundred years and upwards, and bears it to the 
present day. What is that ? It is the use of 
the first day of the week, instead of the last, 
for the Sabbath: trace that to its beginning, 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 43 

and I defy any man to account for it on any 
other ground than the fact of its being the day 
of Christ's resurrection : you may trace it back- 
wards from the eighteenth century, the seven- 
teenth, the sixteenth, and so back to the first 
century, by the clearest records, till you come 
to the very time when it first happened ; for 
the disciples were met on that evening, and our 
Lord then appeared again to them, and they 
met the same evening next week, and from that 
time it has gone on to the present day. Why 
should the Sabbath-day be changed ? How can 
you account for it? What reason was there 
for it ? There is the palpable reason that on 
that day our Lord rose from the dead: you 
cannot trace it back any further ; you bring it 
to that point, and there you stop. And I will 
say that, when you have plainly the evidence 
of profane historians concerning the death of 
our Saviour ; when you have the evidence of 
the twelve apostles to his resurrection, and of 
the five hundred brethren at once, and the 
Apostle Paul afterwards ; and when, in addition 
to their evidence, which Ave have found to be so 
irresistibly true, we have the silent, continu- 
ous, and increasing testimony of the first day 
of the week; I will say that there is no fact 
that ever was recorded in ancient history, of 
which we have so strong an evidence as the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

Now, friends, let us just draw a conclusion 
from the premises before us. Probably most 



44 LECTURES ON THE 

of you are aware of the nature of inductive 
philosophy : the philosopher examines the facts 
•which lie before him on the surface of nature, 
or in the depths of nature ; he examines a large 
number and variety of facts; he analyzes them 
into their particular parts; he compares them 
one with another, and, by an inductive process, 
he traces them to a common principle or com- 
mon cause ; that cause he again traces back- 
wards to another, until he arrives with infal- 
lible certainty at the first great cause, — God, 
the Author of nature. The argument which I 
have now been using enables me to trace Chris- 
tianity, by a similar inductive process, to God, 
the Author of nature. We have a great variety 
of facts before us : we trace them backwards, 
and backwards, until we come to the actual 
miracles of the New Testament ; then we exa- 
mine what those miracles are, and we find 
they are infractions and interruptions of the 
uniform sequences of nature, of the most 
marked and definite description, — not ascrib- 
able to any second cause, but actual infractions 
and interruptions of those sequences of nature 
which we know to be uniform. Nature is 
already traced to God ; we know that the uni- 
form sequences of natural things are by the 
order of his wisdom and his power ; we know 
that no man can resist or interrupt the fiat of 
Supreme authority, and therefore we may rest 
assured that actual miracles, actual interrup- 
tions and contradictions of the uniform order 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 45 

and sequences of nature, must be traced, like 
the order itself, to the Author of nature, — that 
is, to God; and if any man bring forward a 
doctrine, and accompany that doctrine by actual, 
undoubted, public, and unquestionable miracles, 
or infractions of the order of nature, he thereby 
brings along with him an evidence, which the 
most scrutinizing philosophy cannot refuse to 
admit, that his doctrine comes from Grod. I 
must, however, make a little reserve in my ar- 
gument. I think we have some reason to be- 
lieve that a certain power over the order of na- 
ture, within very circumscribed limits, has on 
certain occasions been permitted (for reasons 
we cannot understand) to evil spirits, as I think 
was the case with the magicians of Egypt, who 
contended with Moses ; but, when you examine 
the Christian miracles, you will find in their 
magnitude, their variety, their stupendous im- 
portance, their beauty, their sublimity, and 
in their compassionate character, abundant 
evidence of the origin from which they sprang ; 
and those winders of the Egyptian magicians 
will not for a moment bear the smallest con- 
sideration in comparison with them. And ob- 
serve well, that there is this feature in them : — 
they were all wrought in the support of the 
cause of holiness. Now, you know that a king- 
dom divided against itself cannot stand, and if 
Satan be divided against Satan his house can- 
not stand ; and, within the whole scope of man's 
argument, nothing has ever been produced more 



46 THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

absurd than the blasphemy against the Holy 
Ghost, which the Jews spake, when they as- 
cribed the miracles of our Lord to the power 
of Beelzebub. Now, friends, the argument 
grounded on natural philosophy enables us to 
trace these infractions of the sequences of na- 
ture to God, the Author of nature; and the ho- 
liness of that religion in testimony of which 
those miracles were wrought enables us to trace 
the same wondrous facts to God, in his cha- 
racter of the moral governor of the world, — 
wdio is holy — holy — holy — the Lord God of 
Sabaoth : and may the wiiole' world be filled 
with his glory ! 






SECOND LECTURE. 



ON THE 

GENUINENESS AND AUTHENTICITY 

OE THE 

OLD TESTAMENT. 



The genuineness of the books of the Old 
Testament is established by the same kind of 
critical evidence as that of the books of the 
New Testament. My young friends, I presume, 
are most of them fully aware, that, as the New 
Testament was written in Greek, so the Old 
Testament was written in Hebrew. In the first 
place, I need hardly remind them that in the 
New Testament itself there is a variety of quo- 
tations from the Old Testament. I may say, 
with very little exception, from every part of 
the Old Testament ; and, if any person would 
take the trouble of selecting all such quotations 
from various parts of the Old Testament, con- 
tained in the Gospels and Epistles, they would 
find that they would make an important volume; 

47 



48 LECTURES ON THE 

and it is worthy of observation, that our Saviour 
and his apostles always quote from the Old 
Testament as words of divine authority, so much 
so as to settle every question connected w T ith 
morals or religion: they quote it frequently; 
and they quote it as divine Scripture. Now, 
we are quite sure that the books of the Old 
Testament could not be thus quoted by the 
apostles, and our Saviour, and the Evangelists, 
had they not existed long before that period, 
and been generally known *as the established 
Scriptures of the Jews : in fact, our Lord was 
pointing to the canon of the Old Testament 
where he speaks of "the Law, the Prophets, 
and the Psalms ; for those three contained the 
whole of the Old Testament, according to the 
version that was customary among the Jews. 
The Law contained the five books of Moses; 
the Prophets contained, according to the Jewish 
classification, the whole of the historical books, 
and all the Prophets, as we now call them ; and 
the Psalms contained, not only the Psalms, but 
the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles, and 
the books of Job and Esther : so that these 
three divisions contain the whole ; and our Sa- 
viour mentions them all as bearing testimony to 
himself. 

But we are not confined merely to the New 
Testament as an evidence of this point: the 
works of Josephus, which are very extensive, 
contain voluminous extracts from the Old Tes- 
tament. He lived during the apostolic age, 






EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 49 

and wrote a large work, called " The Antiqui- 
ties of the Jews:" this contains what we may 
call the transference of the history of the Old 
Testament into his own pages. Besides, you 
have frequent quotations from Psalms and the 
Prophets; and not only so, but in one of his 
works he enumerates the books which form the 
canon of the Hebrew Scriptures, and gives a 
list of them. Besides Josephus, there was a 
voluminous and important Jewish writer, who 
lived in Egypt at the time of our Saviour, 
whose name was Philo : he was a Platonic phi- 
losopher, wrote a great variety of works, and 
quoted extensively from almost every part of 
the Old Testament; and it is very remarkable 
that Philo the Jew, as well as Josephus, always 
quotes from the Old Testament as divine Scrip- 
ture. We have, therefore, in the various books 
of the New Testament, in the writings of Jose- 
phus, and in those of Philo, the most abundant 
evidence, on the ground of quotation, of the 
genuineness of the Old Testament, and of the 
antiquity of that part of the sacred volume. 
But, besides these, we are in possession of a 
most important document, — namely, a transla- 
tion which was made of the whole Hebrew 
Scripture, between two hundred and three 
hundred years before the Christian era, into 
the Greek : it was made under the care of the 
Ptolemies of Egypt, by learned Jews of that 
date, and it furnishes, therefore, a plain and 
unquestionable proof of the existence of the 
5 



50 LECTURES ON THE 

books of the Old Testament before that period : 
and they were then translated as very ancient, 
and as divine books. 

There is also internal evidence of the lan- 
guage in which the Old Testament was written. 
^You remember that the genuineness of the New 
Testament was evidenced by the peculiar lan- 
guage in which that was written, — namely, 
Hebrew-Greek. On the very same principle 
of criticism, the genuineness of the Old Testa- 
ment is established by the peculiar nature of 
the language in which almost the whole of it 
W T as written, — namely, pure Hebrew. 

The Jews were accustomed to speak the pure 
Hebrew before they went into Babylon, — be- 
fore the date of their captivity ; but when they 
returned from Babylon, about five hundred and 
thirty years before Christ, they lost their old 
language, and were afterwards accustomed to 
speak in a language which was Hebrew in its 
origin, but was mixed with Chaldee, or Syriac- 
Greek : in short, it was really imbued with the 
Syriac language, and it was about as similar 
to the Hebrew as Italian is to Latin. It is 
very evident, therefore, that the bulk of the 
Old Testament must have been written while 
the Jews were accustomed to speak the pure He- 
brew : and we are enabled in this way to trace 
it backwards to a date anterior to six hundred 
years before the coming of Christ. When the 
Jews settled in their own land, on their return 
from captivity, they formed what was called 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 51 

synagogue-worship, and they used to meet in 
their synagogues on the Sabbath-day. for the 
purpose of the public worship of God ; and part 
of their service consisted in reading extracts 
from the Law of Moses, and afterwards from the 
Law and the Prophets together. My young 
friends will easily remember that this was the 
case when our Saviour was on earth ; how fre- 
quently he went to the synagogues, and how 
plainly it is recorded that the Law and the 
Prophets were read on those occasions ; and, in 
order to make the reading intelligible to the 
hearers, there was a translation provided from 
the pure Hebrew into that Syriac or Chaldee 
language which the people were now speaking. 
Those translations were called Targums, and 
the text was first read in the original He- 
brew, and afterwards read in the version of the 
vernacular language, in order that the people 
might understand the reading. Now, it is a 
very satisfactory circumstance, and gives ad- 
ditional weight to the evidence of which we 
were in possession, of the genuineness of the 
Old Testament, that some of those translations 
are now in our hands, — a very ancient one of 
the books of the Law, written by Onkelos, and 
another of the books of the Prophets, written 
by Jonathan ; and they are documents of great 
importance, not only as throwing considerable 
light on the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, but as 
affording a clear evidence of the genuineness 
and antiquity of those Scriptures. 



52 LECTURES ON THE 

It appears that when the books of the Law 
were written they were carefully kept, first in 
the Tabernacle, and afterwards in the temple; 
and, as the various books of history and pro- 
phecy were afterwards composed, each in their 
own age, they were added to the stock which 
was kept in the archives of the temple ; and 
this was known to have been the practice of the 
Jews before their captivity. After their cap- 
tivity, copies were multiplied in every direction 
for the use of the various synagogues. I will 
also mention, that very peculiar care had been 
taken of the text of the Hebrew Scriptures : 
and even at the time when the Jews were op- 
posing — were doing all they could to oppose — 
the spread of our holy religion, there was a set 
of doctors risen among them, who made a great 
point of attending to 'the preservation of the 
text of the Hebrew Scriptures. They counted 
all the letters of each book, made a careful exa- 
mination, and, with the greatest possible pre- 
cision, attended to it in a remarkable manner; 
being raised up by Providence, as it were, to 
guard from alteration even those very passages 
of their own Scripture which testified against 
themselves and proved the divine origin of the 
mission of Christ. And thus again, through 
the means of its enemies, the truth of our reli- 
gion is established ; which is therefore true, our 
enemies themselves being judges. 

Now, these remarks on the subject of thp 
Old Testament appear to me to be necessary, 



EVIDENCES 0E CHRISTIANITY. 53 

before I introduce another topic of peculiar im- 
portance, in connection with the evidence" of 
Christianity, and no less interesting or less di- 
versified than the evidence from miracles, and 
those historical portions to which I alluded last 
night: I mean the evidence of prophecy. You 
may remember, that I endeavoured, when last 
we met, to show you how Christianity was 
traced upwards to God, as the Author of na- 
ture. Now, in taking a brief view of the sub- 
ject of prophecy, my object will be to trace 
Christianity upwards to God, as the Author of 
providence, and as the supreme Ruler of all 
events. The existence and wisdom of God are 
easily demonstrated, as we all know, from the 
works of nature, and I would endeavour to ex- 
plain what is the true process of inductive phi- 
losophy, which rises step by step ; rises from 
nature up to nature's God : and so, when we 
reflect on the order of providence, when we call 
to mind the wondrous dealings of God with his 
reasonable creatures, when we remember the 
various providential occurrences in our own ex- 
perience, we trace all these events upwards to 
their Author, — that is, God: and I have often 
thought, that there is clearly no evidence more 
satisfactory of the wisdom, power, and good- 
ness of the Divine Being, than this especial 
providence, which all his children cannot fail 
to remark in the course of experience : we often 
find, that circumstances which appear to be of 
5* 



54 LECTURES ON THE 

a very trivial nature lead to most important- 
consequences. 

" Ah ! who shall say how great the plan 
Which this day's incident began ? 
Too small, perhaps, the slight occasion 
For onr dim-sighted observation ; 
It pass'd unnoticed, as the bird 
Which cleaves the silent air, unheard, 
And yet may prove, when understood, 
The harbinger of endless good." 

Now, I suppose there are but few of us that 
have not observed occurrences, — little occur- 
rences, — in our own lives and circumstances, 
which answer to this description ; and I am 
sure no Christian, who has marked the course 
of his own existence, x can fail to rise upwards 
in his mind from the transition of providence 
to its supreme and ever-present Author. We 
come, then, to this point: — that God is the 
ruler of all events, and that all the events which 
happen belong to that vast chain of providence 
which he alone holds in his hand, and with 
which he alone can possibly be acquainted: the 
depths of the past, the present, and the future, 
are all one to him ; but the actual knowledge 
of the future, more especially, is one of those 
divine attributes with w T hich we have every 
reason to believe that no creature can possibly 
interfere, because the future belongs to the 
hidden counsel of an all- wise and unsearchable 
Being. It is very true, that sagacious men 
may often make a very good guess about the 



EVIDENCES OE CHRISTIANITY. 55 

future ; it is very true, that some persons are 
much more long-sighted than others, and often 
form very plausible and correct notions, as it 
afterwards turns out, about that which may 
come at a future day ; and it is also true that 
we are enabled to guess at the future by 
analogy, and that when, under certain circum- 
stances, we have seen certain things happen, 
we of course conclude that, under the same cir- 
cumstances, the same things will happen again; 
indeed, w T e cannot possibly get rid of that sense 
which God has given to us of the uniformity 
of the sequences of nature. We know the sun 
rose yesterday; we know it rose to-day; we 
feel quite sure it will rise to-morrow : therefore, 
so far -we can form a notion of the future. But 
really to know the future, really to know those 
events which will be brought forward in the de- 
velopment of that mighty and mysterious chain, 
of providence which God holds in his own hand, 
is, in the strictest sense of the word, an exclu- 
sively divine attribute ; and therefore, if a re- 
ligion comes attested by prophecies of events 
which were future, and even very distant, at 
the time when the prophecy is uttered, we have 
a distinct proof, independently of miracles, 
which establishes the divine origin of that re- 
ligion. And it is a very remarkable thing, that 
Christianity is distinguished from all other re- 
ligions by this particular mark : — that impostors 
have not ventured upon attesting their religion 
by even an attempt at prophecy. Mahomet, 



56 LECTURES ON THE 

for instance, was too wise to attempt prophecy: 
he knew that, within the scope of a little time, 
the facts that would happen would contradict 
his assertions, and overturn his religion at the 
foundation. But there is nothing by which 
Christianity is more marked and distinguished, 
there is nothing that more strikingly pervades 
the whole of the Holy Scriptures, than a line 
of prophecy; and I think, the more we examine 
it, and the more we compare it with historical 
events recorded by authentic historians and 
known to ourselves, the more we shall be per- 
suaded, and fully convinced, that all scriptures 
were given by inspiration of God. xs ow, there 
are certain conditions which must be fulfilled in 
order to establish the divine origin of a pro- 
phecy. In the first place, we must be in pos- 
session of evidence that the prophecy was really 
delivered before the event took place ; that is 
the first condition. The second condition is 
this : — that the event to which the prophecy 
relates should be of a nature so entirely beyond 
the scope of the mere sagacious conjecture of 
man, and so complex in its nature, as to be be- 
yond the reach of human sagacity, and only to 
be accounted for by divine inspiration. The 
third condition is, that the prophecy shall be 
known to have been accurately fulfilled, in its 
several parts, on the testimony of authentic 
history. 

Now, if I fulfil these three conditions, and 
can make them out clearly, I establish the rea- 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 57 

soning as it relates to prophecy. And I will 
now take a few specimens from the Old and 
New Testament prophecies, in order to point 
out in what a remarkable manner these condi- 
tions are fulfilled by the prophecies contained 
in the Holy Scriptures. The first condition I 
have already aliucled to ; and I consider that no 
more need be said, to prove that both the Old and 
New Testaments were genuine productions, and 
written by the authors whose names they bear, 
and in the age in which they profess to have 
been written. And, as the prophecies whicH 
are contained in Scripture relate to events 
which were future at that time, I consider the 
first condition clear. The ground is clear, so 
far as it relates to that : then let us look at the 
events which were the subject of prophecy. I 
am aware that they are very numerous, for the 
prophecies contained in the Old Testament re- 
late to a very great variety of nations and a 
great variety of events ; and it is almost diffi- 
cult, ,in the multitude of those prophecies, all 
of which answer my two other conditions, to 
select one in preference to another. In the 
first place, I wish to advert to the prophecy 
which our Lord Jesus Christ delivered on the 
subject of Jerusalem, when his disciples came 
to inquire when those things should be of which 
he was speaking ; for they were pointing out 
the magnificent edifice of the temple, and Jesus 
Christ said that the time should come when not 
one stone should be left on another ; and when 



58 LECTURES ON THE 

they inquired when those things should be, and 
what should be the sign of his coming at the 
end of the world, you will find that he goes into 
a description of various circumstances, as it re- 
lates to that part of the question when these 
things should be, — that is, when the temple of 
Jerusalem should be destroyed. And he says 
that that generation should not pass away be- 
fore all those things had happened. In speak- 
ing of the clay of his coming to judgment, he 
says, Of that day and hour knoweth no man, 
not even the angels of God ; but with regard 
to the first points he gives most striking and 
definite information; in the first place, that 
there shall be a general persecution of Chris- 
tianity; and, in the next, that there shall be 
wars, and rumours of wars, in various parts of 
the world; and he mentions, in. the third place, 
that there shall be signs in heaven, and earth- 
quakes in divers places ; he mentions that false 
Christs should arise and deceive many; and 
then he declares that Jerusalem shall be encom- 
passed with armies, and that there should be 
such a time of distress experienced as had never 
been before known on earth ; he describes the 
entire destruction of Jerusalem, and, as I be- 
fore said, 'that not one stone of the temple 
should be left upon another; and not only in 
one passage are these descriptions given, but 
the prophecy is repeated again and again. 

For the accomplishment of these things, we 
turn to the authentic history of Josephus, and 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 59 

of some of the Roman historians, and there we 
find that false Christs arose at that time, in 
several places, and deceived many. Persons 
■who professed to be Christ arose, and many 
went after them. We have authentic history 
that the Christians were exposed, during that 
period, to the most dreadful persecution ; we 
find that there were commotions and wars 
arising among many nations in various parts 
of the Roman empire ; and what Josephus par- 
ticularly mentions, and also Tacitus and other 
Roman historians, the signs were seen in 
heaven, probably astronomical signs, and many 
that may be traced to electricity; there were 
signs, extraordinary darkness, and occurrences 
of that description, besides earthquakes in va- 
rious places. And in the year 70, Titus, son 
of Vespasian, the Roman emperor, and after- 
wards emperor himself, at the head of a vast 
army, invaded Judea. Jerusalem is encom- 
passed with armies ; the Roman eagle is found 
standing in the holy places ; and, from the his- 
tory of Josephus, the sufferings of the Jewish 
people during that period exceeded any thing 
that is known from the records of history to 
have taken place on any other occasion. Mul- 
titudes of Jews had entered into the city before 
Jerusalem was besieged, in consequence of its 
being the time of one of the public festivals, — 
the Feast of Tabernacles : the city was there- 
fore crowded with inhabitants at the time. 
They were torn by intestine factions of the 



60 LECTURES ON THE 

most violent kind, and were reduced to dreadful 
distress in the course of that long siege. It is 
recorded, that no less than one million one 
hundred thousand persons perished in that 
event, so completely fulfilling our Lord's words, 
that the distress experienced on that occasion 
should far exceed any thing that was known in 
the history of man. But here there is an af- 
fecting circumstance to allude to, which throws 
a peculiar light on the subject, as it relates to 
prophecy. We must, however, go back to a 
far more ancient date than the words of our 
Saviour on the subject : we go back to the book 
of Deuteronomy, and you will find in one of the 
latter chapters of that book the curses which 
are pronounced against the Jews in case of their 
disobedience ; and, among other curses, it is de- 
clared that so great shall be the distress and 
straitness in which they shall be placed, when 
besieged by their enemies in their walls, that 
even the delicate woman — the woman w T ho was 
so delicate as not to put her foot upon the 
ground — should be found supporting life by the 
flesh of her own children. What a most re- 
markable prophecy ! how entirely past all the 
reach of human conjecture ! And yet we have 
a definite account of the fulfilment of that pro- 
phecy on three separate occasions. The one 
was when Benhadad, king of Syria, was be- 
sieging Damascus ; you remember the story of 
the two women: the children of one had been 
devoured one day, and the other woman with- 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 61 

held the other the next day. When Nebu- 
chadnezzar afterwards besieged the city, Jere- 
miah, in the Lamentations, says, that the pitiful 
women had sodden their own children. And 
finally, when Jerusalem was encompassed by 
the armies of Titus, when it was torn with in- 
testine factions, when the straitness that was 
suffered during that siege, was carried to the 
greatest extremity, a similar event happened, 
which is related in the most express terms by 
Josephus: that some of those brutal savages 
who headed those factions, and were going from 
house to house to spoil, to rob, and to slaughter, 
came to the house of a delicate lady, — a lady 
so delicate, that we may suppose, according to 
the description, she w T ould not set her foot upon 
the ground ; and yet they found her in the act 
of devouring her own child. It was Mary, the 
daughter of Eleazer : the name is given, as well 
as all the particulars of the circumstance, and 
her character as a lady. 

Here we find, in the works of Josephus, an 
authentic historian of the first century, a plain 
evidence of the literal fulfilment of a most de- 
finite, a most marked, and a most surprising 
prophecy, which was delivered about fifteen 
hundred years before the Christian era. We 
have then a complete fulfilment of my second 
condition ; the whole circumstances of the siege 
of Jerusalem, the distress which was then ex- 
perienced, and the whole of those events which 
accompanied the siege, together with the scat- 

6 



62 LECTURES ON THE 

tering of the Jews afterwards among all nations, 
which was also mentioned. All these things 
are plainly recorded in prophecy, and all en- 
tirely past the common reach of human saga- 
city. There was no reason in the world to ex- 
pect any such thing ; and to crown all, to give 
every effect to the prophecy, we find this pe- 
culiar circumstance, to which we have adverted, 
mentioned by Moses in the book of Deutero- 
nomy, and every circumstance also clearly 
fulfilled in history. These clearly are events 
far beyond the reach of human conjecture, — 
complex, extraordinary, past all conjecture in 
their nature, and therefore fulfilling my second 
condition ; and the third condition, the fulfil- 
ment of them, recorded in an unquestionably 
authentic history, and altogether independent of 
the prophecy! We have therefore in these 
prophecies respecting Jerusalem, and in their 
fulfilment, a most clear and unquestionable 
evidence of the divine origin of the Holy Scrip- 
tures, as well as of the divine origin of the re- 
ligion of which these prophecies were a mark 
or witness ! 

There is another part of this subject, with 
respect to Jerusalem, on which perhaps a few 
sentences may be spoken to a good purpose. 
There arose in the fourth century of the Chris- 
tian era a violent enemy against Christianity : 
I mean the Emperor Julian, who was a person 
of remarkable character and very considerable 
information. Well acquainted with these pro- 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 63 

pliecies, he was yet determined by his. power 
and his might to afford a practical refutation 
of them. He therefore determined that the 
temple should no longer continue in a state of 
desolation ; that the Jews should be brought 
back to their native city; that Jerusalem 
should again arise in its native splendour ; and 
he confided the task of rebuilding the temple 
to his favourite Alypius. He placed large trea- 
sures in his hands; put an army at his dis- 
posal, the soldiers of which were to become 
workmen on that occasion. He said, " Go and 
build the temple of Jerusalem : I will refute 
the prophecies ; I will show that the temple 
shall be built, and stand, and the Jews shall 
still continue their own worship, in spite of] 
these Christians whom I abhor." Alypius re- 
pairs to Jerusalem with his men and treasures, 
and immediately begins the work with every 
possible outward advantage which circumstan- 
ces could afford, obtained by the power and 
treasures of the emperor : and what is the re- 
sult? No sooner was the work begun on 
Mount Moriah, than balls of fire issued from 
the mountain and entirely prevented the pro- 
gress of the work. Again and again the at- 
tempt was made : life after life was lost in the 
service ; and at last Alypius, with all his army 
and treasures, was obliged to abandon the un- 
dertaking, and freely confess to the emperor 
that it was impossible : and the work was given 
up. Now, of this fact we are in possession of 



64 LECTURES ON THE 

a most undoubted historical evidence ; and I do 
not know- that my young friends can have a 
better or more agreeable exercise of their un- 
derstanding than in reading Bishop Way land's 
book, entitled " Jerusalem," in which the whole 
of these facts are spoken of; and they are also 
declared by several Roman, Hebrew, and 
Christian writers : and even Gibbon allows that 
they were respectable and proper witnesses. 
But we have another witness of the fact, and 
the testimony of another enemy to Christianity. 
Ammianus Marcellinus, an eminent Roman 
historian, w T ho lived at the time, who was the 
personal friend of Alypius and Julian, and was 
cognizant of all the facts of the case, has left 
them on record in the books of his history: 
the fact is, they are as undoubted as any fact 
can be in history, and thus it appears that, by 
an act of divine providence, it is unnecessary 
for us to settle whether it w x as directly miracu- 
lous or not: whether it could be accounted for 
by the instrumentality of any philosophical 
cause, or whether it was (as I believe it was) 
directly miraculous, it is not our present duty 
to inquire ; one thing is certain, that such was 
the event of the case, that the prophecy re- 
mained to be fulfilled without interruption, for 
Jerusalem was left in the predetermined deso- 
lation, and the Jews were continued in their 
scattered and desolate condition, which, accord- 
ing to the prophecy, must continue until the 
terms of the gospel are fulfilled. 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 65 

Turn your views to the Jews themselves: 
can any thing be more precise than the prophecy 
contained in the same chapter of the book of 
Deuteronomy, one of the latter chapters and 
other parts of the books of Moses, respecting 
the sufferings which were to come on the Jews 
in case of disobedience? They were to be 
scattered among all the nations of the earth; 
they were to be a proverb, a byword, trodden 
under foot, persecuted ; how they were to be 
robbed, spoiled, and pillaged; and we know 
that we have before us, in the most striking 
manner, the fulfilment of these prophecies, and 
yet "not a grain of them was to fall to the 
earth;" that is to say, although they were to 
be mingled among all nations, they were still 
to maintain their national character, and still 
to be known as a peculiar people. It is very 
remarkable, that their character is in various 
respects developed; their love of money is par- 
ticularly mentioned, and their gold is mentioned 
by Ezekiel, that it should be to them the stum- 
bling-block of iniquity; besides various other 
points respecting them. Now, all those were 
past human conjecture; they were entirely be- 
yond the reach of human sagacity ; and yet we 
know, we have it before us, that these things 
are completely fulfilled, and no man can com- 4 
pare what he knows of the character of the 
Jewish people of this time,, with the words of 
Moses in the book of Deuteronomy, without 
perceiving a plain proof that Scripture is given 
6* 



66 LECTURES ON THE 

by inspiration of God, and that our religion, 
being testified of and borne witness to by those 
prophecies, bears upon it the plainest marks 
of its divine origin. 

I will advert to one or two more circum- 
stances of this kind. I suppose among all the 
cities of antiquity there was none more re- 
markably wicked, no city more loaded with 
riches, none more teeming with prosperity, 
than the city of Tyre. It was the commercial 
emporium of the ancient world, and remarkable 
for the luxury, and pride, and wealth of its in- 
habitants. Ezekiel comes forward, and says 
that it shall be utterly destroyed ; that the very 
ruins of Tyre — that her very dust — shall be 
scraped away ; yes, scraped away ! (what an 
extraordinary expression !) that she should be 
left as the top of a rock, and that the fisher- 
men should spread their nets there. Was any 
thing in the world more improbable, more past 
the reach of human conjecture ? Was any pro- 
phecy that was ever professed to be delivered 
more entirely beyond the scope of man's sa- 
gacity ? Certainly none ; nothing in the world 
could be more striking, or more peculiar, or un- 
expected, or unlikely: and yet this prophecy 
has received the most literal accomplishment; 
this ancient city of Tyre was besieged by Nebu- 
chadnezzar and his army, and was destroyed ; 
and then Tyre arises again on a little island 
close by the sea-coast, or in it indeed, and be- 
comes richer, and prouder, and more glorious, 






EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 67 

* than ever. Alexander the Great comes and 
invades Asia, and makes an attack upon Tyre, 
this commercial emporium of the ancient world; 
and, in order to obtain possession of the new 
city of Tyre, what does he do? Why, he 

| scrapes the dust of the ruins of old Tyre lite- 
rally away, and forms a mound with this ruin, 
the dust of those ruins, with which he passes 
across the strait, and by that means obtains 
access to the new city ; so that that prophecy 
is literally accomplished, that "the dust is 
scraped away from her." Alexander certainly 
had no intention of fulfilling the prophecy; the 
last thing that could have entered into his mind 
was to afford a proof of the Christian religion ; 
but he has done so, and he actually scraped the 
dust of the city, of ancient Tyre, and formed a 
mound with it, and by that means obtained 
access to the new city, broke in on the city, 
and destroyed it. And now both the old and 
the new cities are found to be exactly what is 
described : they are like the top of a bare rock, 
a small fisherman's cabin in one of the two. 
Here again we have the testimony of an enemy: 
a Frenchman travels into the East, (a notorious 
infidel,) and comes to Tyre ; and what does he 
see ? Why, he tells us (little thinking that he 
is affording us a proof of Christianity) that the 
first thing that meets his eye is the fisherman 
spreading his net on the rock : he records it in 
his works, and an English traveller of the name 
of Maundrell also sees the fact : and here is a 



68 LECTURES ON THE 

literal fulfilment of the prophecy. Now you 
see how entirely the conditions are all fulfilled. 
How, first, a proof that the prophecy was de- 
livered long before the event happened: se- 
condly, the nature, the surprising and peculiar 
nature, of the event, beyond all human saga- 
city; and thirdly, the testimony of authentic 
profane historians and modern travellers, an 
infidel, an enemy, as to the very facts which 
were the subject of the prophecy. Here then 
we have a delightful evidence, a most satisfac- 
tory evidence, of the divine origin of the Holy 
Scriptures and of our holy religion. 

This just reminds me of a fact, which I will 
mention by the way, though it does not exactly 
fall in with this part of my subject, — how cu- 
riously the truth of Scripture has been developed 
by many modern travellers; and I will give 
you an instance, which strikes my memory at 
this moment. You know the town of Philippi: 
when Paul came to Philippi, the Philippians, 
you will find, in the 16th chapter, I think, of 
the Acts, called themselves Romans. And 
how came they to be Romans ? Here is a 
question which naturally puzzles the commen- 
tator. The answer is, undoubtedly, they were 
a colony of Rome ; for the Romans were in the 
habit of settling colonies in different parts of 
the world, and they had the privileges of Ro- 
man citizenship, and they must have been colo- 
nists ; but there is no account of that in history, 
and we were obliged to take it for granted, till 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 69 

lately. A modern traveller goes into that spot 
and scrapes up a coin, and on this coin he found 
this inscription, " Philippii Colonia;" and here 
the whole thing is explained : and so, at the end 
of eighteen centuries, up springs a little coin 
from the ground which throws a beautiful light 
on the history of the Acts of the Apostles, and 
the plainest confirmation of the truth of that 
history. Now, this is the very nature of truth, 
which springs up in all directions, and in all 
ages : and you will find that it has become more 
and more confirmed as time rolls on, and there 
is nothing on the other side : — there is the great 
strength of our argument. 

Well, now, Babylon. What a wonderful 
place was Babylon, more than thirty miles in 
circumference, with a wall of immense thick- 
ness or breadth, so that the chariots were 
driven abreast on the top of the wall, inhabited 
by a vast population, the king called the king 
of kings, because all the surrounding nations 
were tributary to him ! and I suppose we can 
form no idea of the importance of the city, or 
of its vast power and strength. But this 
makes no difference to a man like Isaiah, who, 
in the spirit of the Lord, prophesies that it 
should be utterly destroyed; that her two-leaved 
gates should be opened ; that the stream of her 
river should be turned aside; her watercourse 
turned aside ; and that Cyrus (calling him by 
name) should open the two-leaved gates: all 
of which exactly happened in the term of years. 



70 LECTURES ON THE 

Cyrus turned the course of the river ; he opened 
the two-leaved gates, and obtained possession 
of the city : further than that, the city was to 
be entirely destroyed, and the time was to come 
when not a remnant was to be left, — only a heap 
of ruins, — and even the shepherds should not 
lodge there : it should be a place for the habita- 
tions of wild beasts of the forest. So entirely 
desolate should that vast, proud, wondrous 
capital become, that it should be no longer the 
habitation of men, but for the wild beasts of the 
forest! We have it recorded in the fourth 
century, (it is a curious circumstance,) that the 
ground on or near the site on which Babylon 
used to stand was converted by the Persians 
into a park for wild beasts. They thought 
nothing of accomplishing the prophecy ; they 
cared nothing about the Scripture; the last 
thing they thought of was to afford a proof of 
our religion. But they did so ; and a man was 
travelling in that neighbourhood not long ago, 
and he found the city of ancient Babylon in a 
state of entire desolation, scarcely a trace of the 
ancient city, only a few heaps of desolate ruins 
among the desert waste. And what does he 
see there ? Why, one of the first objects that 
meets his view at a distance is that of a lordly 
lion stalking about, a perfect accomplishment 
of the prophecy. What man could see that 
lion, hear of that lion, or read of that lion, 
without perceiving in that peculiar event 
marked accomplishment of ancient prophecy ? 






EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 71 

Then Edom. What can be more curious 
than the accomplishment of the prophecies 
about Edom ? It lay between Judea and Egypt, 
and was the country w T hich w 7 e now r call Arabia 
Petrea. Edom was once a country of great 
importance. "Oh, thou who dwellest in the 
cleft of the rock," (this is the language of the 
prophet Obadiah,) "though thou buildest thy 
nest with the eagle, the Lord shall bring thee 
to the ground." They are described in the 
Holy Scriptures as a most powerful and nume- 
rous people, and their cities as being built on 
the tops of rocks and places of immense 
natural strength ; and then the prophet goes 
on to declare that Edom shall be utterly laid 
waste, — so entirely, that no traveller should be 
able to pass through her. And, behold, the 
whole of it is accomplished. I suppose it is 
considered nearly an impossibility for any 
traveller now to pass through the land of Edom, 
so perfect is the waste, so entire the desolation, 
and so extreme is the danger. But there were 
two gentlemen, with whom I have some little 
acquaintance personally, who lately determined 
to see what they could do in penetrating into 
the land of Edom : they are two naval officers, 
(Captains Keeling and Mangles ;) and they ac- 
tually found their way to the old city of Edom ; 
and there they found immense ruins of build- 
ings in the rocks, and a great number of sepul- 
chres hewn out of the rocks, and all the ruins 
of an ancient city of prodigious strength, ex- 



72 LECTURES OX THE 

actly answering the old description, and now 
so desolate that no traveller can pass through 
that country. 

Who does not perceive here that all the con- 
ditions are accomplished ? You have a proof 
of the antiquity of the prophecies : the events 
to which the prophecies relate are past all hu- 
man sagacity; and as for the fulfilment, you 
have it from the mouths of most respectable 
men now living: so that in the nineteenth cen- 
tury we are furnished with unquestionable evi- 
dence that those who uttered those prophecies 
spoke by inspiration of God, and that the re- 
ligion to which they bear testimony is indeed 
the religion of God himself. Who else can 
know the future f 

There is one point in this subject which I 
dare not omit, it is so peculiarly important and 
interesting. The whole of the Old Testament 
is distinguished by a line of prophecy relating 
to those events of which the Xew Testament 
contains the historical account; and there is as 
great and as beautiful a correspondence be- 
tween the Old and Xew Testaments, as there 
is between the lungs of the human body and 
the air which we breathe. No man can medi- 
tate on the formation and structure of the'hu- 
man lungs on the one hand, and the formation 
and composition of the atmosphere on the other, 
without perceiving that they are fitted one to the 
other by a designing hand of perfect wisdom: 
if the lungs had been differently constructed, 






EVIDENCES OF CHKISTIANITY. 73 

we could not inhale the air ; if the air had been 
differently composed, to inhale it would have 
been death instead of life. Who does not per- 
ceive the matchless hand of divine wisdom and 
design in this agreement? Did the lungs 
manufacture the air? Has the air any ten- 
dency to produce the lungs? The very 
thought is foolish in the extreme : but a master- 
hand has prepared them both, and fitted them 
one to another, and no man can efface the ef- 
fect which has resulted from that design. 

And so you will find, friends, on the com- 
parison of the Old and New Testaments, that 
they are adapted to each other so as to make 
up a perfect union and accordant whole. You 
have in the Old Testament a most marvellous 
line of prophecy respecting an individual; 
you have in the New Testament an authentic 
history of that individual, fulfilling the whole 
of that chain of prophecy. Allow me to men- 
tion a few circumstances connected with this 
subject. To go through the whole of the pro- 
phecies relating to our Saviour would be quite 
beyond the limits of our time. But a little 
sketch of the subject: — 

In the first place, in the 3d of Genesis, the 
first promise that is made, and the curse pro- 
nounced upon the serpent, is, that the seed of 
the woman should bruise the serpent's head : 
that was a general description, which is de- 
veloped in all its parts as we proceed. Christ, 
the seed of the woman, was to obtain an eternal 
7 



74 LECTURES ON THE 

ascendency over sin, and therefore was to be 
truly man. 

You go on a little further in the book of 
Genesis, till you come to Abraham: — "In thy 
seed shall all the nations of the earth be 
blessed;" therefore this deliverer, this Saviour, 
was not only to be of the human race, but of 
the seed of Abraham. You go on to the 49th 
of Genesis: — "The sceptre shall not depart 
from Judah until Shiloh come, the peace-giver 
and sent of God." He was to come, therefore, 
of the tribe of Judah : here is a further illumi- 
nation. You then go forward to the book of 
Jeremiah : — "After those days, saith the Lord, 
I will raise up unto David a righteous branch, 
and a king shall reign and prosper, and execute 
justice and judgment in the earth:" here is a 
further illumination. He was to be of the 
family of David, or, according to the words, 
"A branch out of the stem of Jesse, out of the 
root of Jesse, the father of David." Here, 
then, you have his humanity, his nation, his 
tribe, his family : and in the 5th chapter of 
Micah you have his birthplace: — "And thou, 
Bethlehem-Ephratah, though thou be little 
among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee 
shall he come forth that shall rule in Israel:" 
there is his birthplace. Then you have the 
precise date of his coming : seventy weeks are 
appointed from the going forth of the decree 
to rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the prince ; 
to put an end to transgression, to make recou- 



' 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 75 

ciliation for iniquity, and so on. The date of 
the decree which was issued by Artaxerxes for 
the rebuilding of Jerusalem we know from his- 
tory; and, according to the common Jewish 
enumeration, four hundred and ninety years 
brings us exactly (as far as I can now calcu- 
late) to the time of the death of our Saviour. 

We have, therefore, the exact time when he was 
to come : then w T e have his character ; righteous- 
ness was to be the girdle of his loins, and faith- 
fulness the girdle of his reins, and with equity 
was he to judge all nations. His holiness is 
described in the clearest manner in the 11th 
chapter of Isaiah. Then we have his sufferings : 
is there any thing in the world more striking 
and more important than the prophecy con- 
tained in the 53d chapter of Isaiah ? I will 
say a little more on that point soon ; but there 
is a very complete account of his whole stay in 
the world, his being rejected by the Jews, led 
as a lamb to the slaughter, and of his being 
wounded for our transgressions and bruised for 
our iniquities. Again, w T e have his resurrection 
in the very same chapter : — " When thou hast 
made his soul an offering for sin, he shall see 
his seed, he shall prolong his days:" — prolong 
his days : there is his resurrection. Again, in 
the 16th Psalm : — " Thou w T ouldst not leave my 
soul in hell, [or in the grave, as it may be read ;] 
neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see cor- 
ruption :" then we have many prophecies of 
his reign and government, of which there shall 



76 LECTURES ON THE 

be no end. You will perceive that these pro- 
phecies are poured in upon us in different ages, 
through the instrumentality of different pro- 
phets. One man contributes one thing to the 
stock of information, another man another 
thing to the same stock : there are various rays 
of light pouring in on this subject at various 
times from different quarters, and all meeting 
in a single focus. But more especially there 
are points in these prophecies of a most marked 
and peculiar character ; indeed, to the very 
last, when the humanity of Christ and his di- 
vine descent are so particularly mentioned, 
there is an express mention of his divinity : — 
" Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is 
given ; and the government shall be upon his 
shoulders, and his name shall be called Won- 
derful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Ever- 
lasting Father, the Prince of peace.'' " His 
name shall be called Jehovah, the Lord our 
righteousness;" (in the 23d chapter of Jere- 
miah, the one I before quoted.) But you now 
perceive, from the short account I have given, 
how very remarkable all those prophecies re- 
specting our Saviour are: first, their great 
complexity, and the information which they 
unfold, — such as the tribe of his virgin mother, 
and even the lesser particulars of the case ; in 
his thirst " they gave him gall and vinegar to 
drink, parted his garments among them, and 
cast lots for his vesture," (in the 22d Psalm,) 
— even the smallest particulars. Here is light 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 77 

pouring in upon us from various quarters, and 
all the particulars of the case ; and the whole 
account is of the most surprising nature, far 
beyond the reach of human conjecture. These 
prophecies are scattered over the sacred volume ; 
we have to pick them out; they come one 
by one, — incidentally, as it were, — and often 
mingled with other things. Further, you will 
observe that many of them are enigmatical in 
their nature : they could not be understood by 
the persons who delivered them or heard them, un- 
less they were inspired to understand that which 
they were inspired to deliver ; for example, the 
point I just now mentioned about prolonging 
his days : — " When thou hast made his soul an 
offering for sin, [when, that is, when they put 
him to death,] he shall prolong his days." Here 
was an enigma ; no one could understand that 
at the time, unless they were inspired to under- 
stand it. And you will find in the end of the 
52d chapter of Isaiah a prophecy that may 
truly be called enigmatical ; it is entirely im- 
possible that any man at the time it was de- 
livered should understand its bearing, unless 
it was by inspiration. At the end of the 52d 
chapter of Isaiah you will find, " His form was 
marred more than any man's, his countenance 
and his form more than the sons of men : so i 
shall he sprinkle many nations." What can 
be the meaning of it ? It was all in obscurity 
at the time it was delivered. When you come 
to the New Testament, the enigma is solved, 
7* 



78 LECTURES ON THE 

the difficulty is removed, a blaze of light is 
poured on the subject, every particular is ful- 
filled. For instance, our blessed Saviour's 
visage was more marred than any man's with 
sorrows and afflictions ; his crown, his thorns, 
more than any man's ; his form pierced by 
the nails, pierced by the spear, more marred 
than any man's : and so shall he sprinkle many 
nations. We turn to the apostles, and Ave find 
that the blood of Christ must be sprinkled on 
all our hearts by faith, and that by his merito- 
rious death he has procured for us the gift of 
the Holy Spirit, by which he sprinkles all na- 
tions ; therefore the whole difficulty is removed, 
and in the New^ Testament you find every diffi- 
culty gone. His incarnation, his divine cha- 
racter, his miraculous birth, the date at which 
he was to be born, his humility, his low estate, 
his sufferings, his righteous character, his 
violent death, his resurrection, his prolonging 
his days, and his glorious reign, — the whole 
comes before us with a flood of light, and no 
man can for a moment doubt that here there 
is the full accomplishment of the prophecies ! 

I wish to impress on the minds of my young 
friends, that such is the nature of these prophe- 
cies respecting our Saviour, that they had no 
tendency whatever to accomplish themselves, 
from their enigmatical nature, for it was only 
by the events that the prophecies were ex- 
plained ; and the persons w T ho accomplished the 
prophecies were persons who were enemies to 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 79 

the truth, in a great variety of instances. For 
instance, the Roman soldiers little thought that 
they were accomplishing the prophecy of Scrip- 
ture when they cast lots for the garments of 
our Lord ; the enemies of truth little thought 
that they were accomplishing any prophecy of 
Scripture when they wagged their heads at our 
Lord on the cross, and when they gave him 
gall and vinegar to drink. And they show that 
the prophecies were accomplished by things not 
of man's procuring, but which arise by the order 
of providence, in a great variety of instances 
through the instrumentality of the enemies of 
Jesus, and yet the accomplishment is perfect, 
and the enigma is fully solved. You can illus- 
trate it by the subject of hieroglyphics : you 
go to Egypt and you find a place covered with 
hieroglyphics, and no man can understand it ; 
it has been a literary curiosity for many ages ; 
but a Dr. Young arises, and a Champollion, and 
they discover a key to these hieroglyphics, and 
in a moment the whole is as clear and as easy 
to read as any newspaper. Thus, when you 
come to the New Testament, you find in it those 
facts which furnish* a key to explain the most 
difficult prophecies, and all is light: we find 
ourselves in the midst of a moral demonstra- 
tion, of the most perfect character, of the divine 
origin both of the Old and New Testaments. 

These prophecies respecting our Saviour are 
of peculiar importance, because they were ut- 
tered doubtless for the very purpose of afford- 



80 LECTURES ON THE 

ing us an evidence of the truth of that religion 
which the Scriptures introduce to our view; 
they are a seal which never can be broken ; 
they are a testimony which never can be 
removed into a corner; and they afford a 
sufficient answer to all the cavils, doubts, and 
arguments of all unbelievers. I think I have 
said enough for the purpose of proving that 
as on the one hand Christianity is traced, 
through the intervention of miracles, to God, 
as the Author of nature, so on the other hand 
Christianity is traced, through the interven- 
tion of the prophecies, to God, as the Author 
of providence. 

I wish to occupy a little time with a very 
brief sketch of another part of the same sub- 
ject which I hinted at last evening. Chris- 
tianity is traced to God, as the moral Governor 
of the world. That the evidences of Christian- 
ity are so communicated to us is a subject of 
wonderful variety, scope, and depth : it may be 
said there is no end to the subject. I will ven- 
ture to say that discourses might be delivered 
upon it, evening after evening, with scarcely a 
perception of exhausting the subject; but we 
must apply just a few ; and although the argu- 
ments of miracles and prophecies are quite suf- 
ficient in themselves to prove our points, and 
wholly incapable of refutation, I consider that 
the strongest point of all is the internal evi- 
dence by which we trace our holy religion, in 
the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, 



EVIDENCES OE CHRISTIANITY. 81 

to the moral Governor of the world. Let any 
man take the pains of collecting from the works 
of the ancient heathen- philosophers, the wisest 
and most learned, all the information which 
they can give us on the subject of the Supreme 
Being: — a good deal might be collected from 
them on the subject ; they were visited by some 
rays of light ; they probably had some linger- 
ing, transient notion of God ; some of them 
might possibly learn something from the Jews : 
but beyond all this there is no evidence, in my 
mind. I think it may be abundantly proved, 
that a certain measure of divine illumination is 
bestowed on all the children of men, whatever 
may be their condition as to outward ignorance, 
and that the ancient heathen philosophers, for 
example, were not left without some feeble rays 
of light from heaven ; and I am bold to confess 
my opinion that there are many passages in 
their works which can be accounted for only by 
that principle. But still, friends, I am prepared 
to mark the distinction between the early day- 
light and the blaze of noon ; and when I com- 
pare the theologies of Plato, of Aristotle, and 
even of Socrates and Cicero, with the theology 
of Isaiah and David and Jeremiah, and the other 
prophets, and Solomon and Moses more parti- 
cularly, it is indeed like the comparison of the 
faint twilight with the blaze of noon. It is in 
the Scriptures, and in the Scriptures only, that 
we find the attributes of God developed in all 
their splendour, and in all their beauty and in 



82 LECTURES ON THE 

all their strength ; and were I to point out one 
particular evidence, which I consider would 
establish the divine authority of the Old and 
New Testaments, I should say, look at the ac- 
count which those volumes contain of God him- 
self. It is needless to mention to you the 
almost innumerable passages which relate to the 
subject ; but you know, friends, that we find in 
the Scriptures, that God is eternal, — from ever- 
lasting to everlasting, — who was, and is, and is 
to come. You find, also, that God is a Spirit, 
invisible, and is to be worshipped in spirit and 
in truth. You will find nothing like that in any 
of the heathen philosophers. You will find, 
again, that God is omnipotent ; that he made 
heaven and earth, and all things that are in 
them ; that in the beginning he created the hea- 
ven and the earth ; that he made all things out 
of nothing. Now, this is an idea which you cannot 
trace in the heathen philosophers, — his making 
all things out of nothing ; though some fully ac- 
knoAvledge him as a Creator, in one sense of the 
word. You find in the Holy Scriptures that he 
is omnipresent. What a magnificent idea ! what 
a glorious and sublime conception ! " Whither 
shall I go from thy Spirit, and whither shall I 
flee from thy presence ? If I ascend up into 
heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in 
hell, behold, thou art there also." These are 
the natural attributes of God, as they are called ; 
and then his perfect wisdom : — " He stretched 
out the heavens by his discretion, and wisdom 






EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 83 

was with him when he laid the foundation of 
the earth." His providence is another attri- 
bute frequently mentioned. And then his moral 
attributes, — his justice, his holiness ; how often 
do the Scriptures set forth the holiness of God, 
— " Of purer eyes than to behold evil;" — his 
perfect justice, his equity, his moral govern- 
ment. I mentioned his goodness ; and, above 
all, what I think Bishop Home, in his work on 
the Psalms, ventures to call his darling attri- 
bute, — the attribute of mercy. I should like 
to inquire of my young friends who are accus- 
tomed to the Greek literature, where can they 
find any thing, within the whole compass of an- 
cient literature, worthy of the comparison with 
these three words : — ■• God is love" ? My opi- 
nion is, that these three words contain a distinct 
and unanswerable evidence of the divine origin 
of Scripture: — "God is love." 

You are to remember that many of the an- 
cient Greek and Latin philosophers were per- 
sons of great learning ; of deep and compre- 
hensive powers of mind ; of the highest degree 
of mental acquirements ; educated to the high- 
est point to which man could be, at that time : 
and you are also to remember that many of the 
writers of the Old and New Testaments were 
illiterate men, and very badly educated ; and 
that there was little science among the Jews ; 
that they were in various respects rather a rigid 
and independent people : and yet you find these 
well-educated and learned philosophers coming 



84 LECTURES ON THE 

forward with that degree of information on the 
subject which may be compared to twilight, and 
you find these illiterate persons coming forward 
with that blaze of illumination which can only 
be compared to the noonday sun. What can 
account for the difference ? Is there any man 
who dares to say that it can be accounted for 
on any other principle whatever but the divine 
origin of the Scriptures, and the character of 
which those Scriptures testify ? Take the 
moral law, which you may trace to the same 
unenlightened age, as I shall have an opportu- 
nity of explaining on a future evening. But 
when you compare the moral system of Plato, 
Aristotle, and Cicero, with the moral system of; 
the Bible, there is the same difference to be seen, 
— a most wonderful difference in the degree of 
light. One of the marks of inspiration is, the 
concentrating of a good deal of important truth 
in a very short compass. And what do you 
think comprises those ancient laws, — the whole 
laws? Why, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and 
all thy mind, and all thy might ; and thou shalt 
love thy neighbour as thyself:" here is the ful- 
filling of the law. How unspeakably superior 
is the moral law, as it is developed in this short 
sentence, to all the speeches of the great body 
of heathen philosophers ! and what a plain evi- 
dence we have, in these very words, that ours is 
the religion which flows from the fathomless 
fountain of infinite wisdom and love. 






EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 85 

Let any man take our Saviour's Sermon on 
the Mount, and I will venture to say, that, if 
he is a man of any moral feeling, of any moral 
discernment, of any nice taste, on the subject 
of virtue, he has, in that Sermon on the Mount, 
a most definite, internal proof of the divine 
authority of our religion. Let us point out one 
or two instances. Take the first beatitude : — 
" Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the 
kingdom of heaven." Now, this is a point 
which distinguishes the moral system of the 
Bible. The whole moral system of the Bible 
may be said to be founded, as it were, on hu- 
mility ; from humility may be said to spring 
other virtues in abundance ; humility, contrition, 
brokenness, poverty of spirit, are absolutely 
essential to a Christian character : but when 
you come to open the pages of the ancient 
philosophers — the inspired philosophers of 
Greece — we find that there is much, very much, 
to flatter the pride of man, and to nurse him in 
the notion of his own original virtue. Poverty 
of spirit would, by many of the ancient writers, 
have been considered a shame and a folly, and 
unworthy of the very character of a man ; and 
yet I should like to know whether there is any 
one moral quality which works so well in prac- 
tice, and so upholds the welfare of man, in the 
power of God, as humility and brokenness of 
spirit? And here we have a distinguishing 
point, of the highest moral importance, embo- 
somed in the code of Christianity ; distinguishing 
8 



86 LECTURES ON THE 

it from all the other codes, and affording an evi- 
dence in itself of its divine origin. Then, again, 
" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God." Here is another point, in which our 
Saviour traces the virtue of man to that spring 
t from which it must come ; that is, the heart 
made pure. He tells us, that man's heart 
naturally brings forth the works of evil until it 
is made pure by the power of the Holy Spirit, — 
renewed by God under the influence of that 
Spirit ; that the spring and origin of all morals 
is the purity of heart, — a most distinguishing 
feature. For you will generally find that what- 
ever was written on morals by uninspired per- 
sons is external, only the surface of things ; it 
does not go down into the depths of human 
motives. But more especially the moral system 
of the Bible is distinguished by this circum- 
stance :---that it always brings forward love to 
God as the very foundation of the whole. And 
here there is a marked distinction from all the 
other moral systems which have ever been in- 
vented. We are taught by our Saviour — we 
are taught by his apostles — that the first prin- 
ciple of morals, is to love God with all our 
hearts and with all our souls ; and from this 
principle all that is virtuous and excellent 
(either for the glory of God or the welfare of 
man) is found to spring. And if we take these 
points into view, and contrast them with what- 
ever has been produced in any age by moral, 
uninspired persons, the contrast affords a most 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 87 

abundant evidence of the divine origin of Scrip- 
ture. It is also to be remembered that, what- 
ever you find in modern writers of correct 
theology or true morals, we find in its original 
form in the Holy Scriptures ; and, though you 
may find some sayings on this subject in the 
writings of unbelievers, they are borrowed, all 
of them borrowed, from the sacred pages. 

I point, therefore, to the broad features of 
the attributes of God, unfolded in the Scriptures, 
and to the broad features of the moral law, as 
distinguished from the uninspired systems of mo- 
rality, as affording a most unquestionable proof 
that our holy religion, which is traced, through 
the intervention of miracles, to God, as the 
Author of nature, and, through the intervention 
of prophecy, to God, as the Author of provi- 
dence, must also be traced, through the inter- 
vention of its own internal, moral, and spiritual 
character, to God, as the moral Governor of the 
world, — as he who is holy, great, and true. 
But before I leave this part of the subject I 
must just advert to a point which throws addi- 
tional light on it, and may be said to crown the 
whole : — that the moral law of the Holy Scrip- 
tures was embodied in the example of our Lord 
and Saviour Jesus Christ. And I know not 
that I could point the attention of young per- 
sons to a subject more full of interest, or more 
replete with unanswerable evidence, as it relates 
to the divine origin of our holy religion, than 
the recorded example, in the life and conversa- 



88 LECTURES ON THE 

tion, of our Lord Jesus Christ, put together by 
four historians, and sustained with a precision, 
with a simplicity, with a beauty, with a com- 
pleteness, with a harmony, for which nothing 
but truth can possibly account. Oh, it is in- 
deed a wonderful subject of contemplation! 
Think of the perfect purity of Jesus Christ; 
without blemish and without spot ; holy, harm- 
less, undefiled in spirit. Think of his undoubted 
integrity; that he is the truth, the very truth, 
and we always find him the noble magnanimous 
reprover of all iniquity ; fearless of all the ter- 
rors of man's judgment, fearless of all the suf- 
ferings which man can inflict. Then think of 
that remarkable combination with this mag- 
nanimity, this integrity, this holy boldness ; of 
meekness, patience, gentleness, forbearance ; 
gentle as the lamb ; how meek and patient in 
all his sufferings : and even after he was hang- 
ing on the fatal cross his language was, " Father, 
forgive them, for they know not what they do." 
Then think of his active beneficence; abounding 
in love and charity towards all : all his miracles ; 
the miracles of compassion ; forever engaged in 
relieving distress ; full of mercy and good works. 
Then think of his devotional character ; how he 
spent whole nights in the solitude of the moun- 
tain-side, in communion with God. Think of his 
absolute resignation to his Father's will: — "If 
it be possible, let this cup pass from me ; yet, 
not as I will, but as thou wilt. If this cup may 
not pass from me, except I drink it, thy will be 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 89 

done. My meat is to do the will of my Father 
who is in heaven, and to finish his work." Think 
of his perfect fortitude ; of the firmness and 
quietness with which he suffered. Above all, 
think of that wondrous and mysterious act of 
infinite love and condescension, when he who 
" was in the form of God, and thought it not 
a robbery to be equal with God, made himself 
of no reputation, and took on him the form of 
a servant, and was made in the likeness of man, 
and, being formed and fashioned as a man, 
humbled himself and became obedient unto 
death, even the death of the cross." Think of 
the height of his glory ; think of the depth of 
his humiliation ; and you will then obtain some 
idea, according to the finiteness of your concep- 
tion, of the infinite condescension, of the un- 
bounded love, of Christ. 

It is a standing miracle, w T hich proves the 
truth of Christianity beyond the shadow of a 
single doubt, that a character such as that of 
our Lord Jesus Christ should be described and 
sustained without a fallacy, even by one writer. 
But when yo'u find four historians, and the 
writers of the Epistles also, all of them speak- 
ing and writing on this subject, not in a formal, 
not in a systematic, but in an incidental, man- 
ner ; and when you find that the character of 
Christ comes out from the whole of their pro- 
ductions, in a manner perfectly natural, and 
that the character is sustained, without the 
least stumbling, and without the least degree 
8* 



90 LECTURES ON THE 

of error, or difficulty, or contradiction, with 
perfect nicety, and developed in all its purity, ' 
beauty, and harmony, — I say, you have there 
a standing miracle, an internal evidence of the 
most undoubted character, of the divine origin 
of that religion which Christ came to reveal. 
And, further, when you compare the character 
thus developed with the moral law which he 
himself proclaimed, and find that the two things 
tally one with another, and perfectly corre- 
spond, even as the canopy of heaven above 
corresponds with the verdurous surface of the 
earth beneath, — I say, friends, that in this 
beautiful accordance, in the mighty scope, va- 
riety, and spirituality of the divine law, in the 
matchless manner with which that law was em- 
bodied in the example of Christ, and in the 
fitness of one to the other, you have a moral 
evidence strong enough to suspend a world 
upon. It is a chain upon which any weight 
might be hung with impunity, for it cannot be 
broken. 

You will now perceive the point to which we 
are arrived. I have been appealing to you as 
rational men and women ; I have been appeal- 
ing to the noblest faculty of your reason. You 
know that the good shall live by faith ; you 
also know that the Christian religion is founded, 
as far as it relates to evidence, on the basis of 
moral reason. You know that there is nothing 
in the world more truly reasonable, more justly 
philosophical, more clearly founded on unques- 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 91 

tionable truth, and upon that which is proved 
to be the truth, than the Christian religion. 
And when you take into view these three lines 
of argument, — miracles, prophecy, and the 
moral weight of Christianity; when you go 
further, and trace it in its practical workings ; 
when you find that it is the means, in the hands 
of God's divine providence, for that new crea- 
tion which is still more eminently indicative 
of divine power than the visible creation itself; 
when you find that it is the means of converting, 
as far as it is truly received, the barren wilder- 
ness of man's thorny, fruitless, and wicked 
heart, into the garden of the Lord ; when you 
find that it is the means of making that dreary 
wilderness blossom as the rose, even as the rose 
of Sharon : when you take all these things into 
view, away with the shadow of a doubt forever 
and for evermore. And, oh ! let us no longer 
treat Christianity as if it were a delusion ; for 
there are multitudes among the professors of 
the Christian name, who, on the one hand, ad- 
mit its truth, and, on the other hand, live as if 
it were not true. But I call on you, my dear 
young friends, to act on a better principle ; 
and knowing, from unquestionable evidence, 
that Christianity is true, and that it is the reli- 
gion of God, I call upon you to act on this deli- 
berate result, and henceforth to resign your- 
selves to the service of your heavenly Father, 
and, in good earnest, to take up your cross and 
follow Jesus Christ. 



THIRD LECTURE. 



ON THE 

DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST. 



In making a statement, when we last met, 
of the internal evidence of the truth of Chris- 
tianity, I confined my attention very much to 
the revelation of the attributes of the Most 
High ; of the moral law ; and an examination 
of the character of our Lord Jesus Christ. But, 
in point of fact, the argument respecting the 
internal evidence of the truth of our religion 
lies still deeper and extends much further than 
I have hitherto mentioned ; for there are other 
great truths revealed to us in the Holy Scrip- 
tures, of a most important and peculiar kind, 
far beyond the reach of human imagination 
and all the invention of moral philosophy. They 
are entirely beyond the perception of man, but, 
nevertheless, so completely adapted to their 
purpose as to carry with them an internal weight 
of evidence, of very great strength indeed, that 
they are the doctrines, not of man, but of God. 

I hardly know a wider or more interesting 

93 



94 LECTURES ON THE 

field in which we might expatiate, than in the 
internal evidence of the truth of Christianity. 
The philosophical truth of the effect of gravita- 
tion upon all material bodies — that they are 
drawn towards each other by a certain force of 
attraction — now appears a most familiar cir- 
cumstance. In this day we give a ready assent 
to this doctrine of philosophy ; but we can hardly 
believe that, one hundred and fifty years ago, 
this doctrine, which now appears so plain and 
so palpable, was entirely unknown : I know of 
nothing that more remarkably distinguishes the 
great discovery of Sir Isaac Newton than the 
simplicity and plainness of the truth, and its 
universal palpability, which is now so univer- 
sally seen and understood. In the same way, 
there are some things declared in the Holy 
Scriptures, which are so evident, now they are 
revealed, that we can hardly suppose that men 
ever could be ignorant of such truths ; and yet, 
until they were revealed by the Holy Scriptures, 
they were wholly unknown to men, and had 
never been reached by the utmost flights of un- 
inspired moral philosophy. You have then, 
more particularly from that broad feature of 
divine truth so plainly revealed in Scripture 
and so amply confirmed by experience, so trans- 
fused into every page of the history of man, — 
the universal corruption of human nature ! In 
how many, in how various forms has the wicked- 
ness of man displayed itself? Who can take 
up the pages of history, and observe how they 






EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 95 

are stained with blood and all sorts of criminal- 
ity, without perceiving that there must be some 
general cause for the facts which abound on 
every side of the description which I have now 
mentioned ? For- example, when we reflect on 
the horrors of the slave-trade, and slavery, — 
horrors familiar to the minds of many of my 
young friends, I doubt not, — to what original 
cause can we trace them ? to what general 
■0 cause, to what one cause, can we trace all these 
multitudinous forms of iniquity which deface 
the history of our species ? This is a question 
which never was answered by uninspired moral 
philosophers, who would always set out at the 
wrong end, and begin with describing man as 
virtuous instead of vicious. But the Holy 
Scriptures declare the original cause of these 
iniquities, — namely, the corruption of the heart 
of man in his fallen state ; and I hardly know 
any one truth which more remarkably distin- 
guishes the records of inspiration than that 
which is couched in such forcible language, 
such concentrated language, by the prophet 
Jeremiah : — " The heart is deceitful above all 
things, and desperately wicked. " And, fur- 
ther, the origin and root of this corruption is 
also developed in Scripture, in the history 
which is there given of the fall of our first 
parents, and of the descent of their corrupt 
nature from father to son in every generation. 
You will perceive, from this brief statement, 
that the Holy Scriptures represent mankind as 



96 LECTURES ON THE 

requiring not only the revelation of divine 
truth, not only light, not only information, not 
only precept, but, in one word, Redemption. 
A vast, divine, powerful plan is required for the 
restoration of fallen and corrupt man to his 
original state of virtue and conformity to the 
divine will. The whole bearing of the Christian 
religion is practical ; and this is one of the most 
important principles for my young friends to 
keep in view, because, when we enter a littlefll 
into these points, it is not for the' purpose of 
gratifying a spirit of speculation or of human 
curiosity, but to show the practical workings of 
that mighty plan which God has ordained for 
man's salvation. 

And here we come to what may truly be 
called the very centre and turning-point, the 
very hinge and moving principle, of the Chris- 
tian system ; and that is, the divinity of Jesus 
Christ. Were we in need of information only, 
were we by nature virtuous, and had only to 
have information of our duty in order to be en- 
abled to do it, were there no change to be 
wrought in us, were there no guilt to be re- 
moved from us, then indeed we might do with 
a religion which would exclude the divine cha- 
racter of our dear Redeemer ; then indeed it 
would be enough for us that he should be a 
mere man and prophet, and correctly declare 
those truths which it is our duty to believe and 
those virtues which we are called to practise. 
But God deals with us as with lost sinners; 



m 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 97 

and when we come to view ourselves in this 
character and in this capacity, — when we find 
that we are in danger of everlasting destruction, 
and that nothing but a hand of divine and om- 
nipotent love can save us from this destruction, — 
then we have recourse with joy and gratitude 
to the glorious doctrine that Jesus Christ our 
Saviour is not only man, but God ! You know 
that it is written in Scripture that the just shall 
live by faith ; that without faith it is impossibly 
to please God, and that without faith no man 
can be recovered from his lost condition. Now, 
in whom do the Scriptures require us to believe, 
in order that we may witness the salvation of 
God ? There is nothing more abhorrent from 
the whole scope of Scripture, nothing more op- 
posed to the harmony and nature of truth, than 
the strange notion which some persons enter- 
tain, that faith in a mere man, or in a mere 
creature of God, can be the means of his salva- 
tion. No, friends ! God admits of no rival. 
He is a jealous God. He allows of no form of 
idolatry; and, although we are called upon to 
believe the words of any inspired prophet, it is 
idolatry in the sight of God, that we should be- 
lieve in any mere prophet, as the Saviour in 
whom we are to trust. "lam the Lord ; I am 
King and God," saith Jehovah; " and besides 
me there is no Saviour." Now, if my young 
friends will apply this principle, and illustrate 
by it certain passages in the New Testament, 
the consequence will be, that they will imme- 
9 



98 LECTURES ON THE 

diately perceive the force of the evidence of 
Scripture for the divinity of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. What does he himself say? " I am the 
resurrection and the life : he that believeth on 
me, though he were dead, yet shall he live : and 
whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never 
die." There he upholds himself as the object, 
the appointed object, of saving faith. And, 
again, we may compare with this the words of 
the apostle : — " There is none other name under 
heaven given among men whereby we must be 
saved." So that the very fact of our being re- 
quired to believe in him, as the Saviour of our 
souls, when compared with the general tenor of 
Scripture, at once establishes the doctrine of 
his divinity ; and it is quite impossible, consist- 
ently with the principles of Scripture, to be- 
lieve, for the purpose of salvation, in any being, 
however glorious, however wise, however ex- 
alted, — nay, not in the highest of all arch- 
angels, — for the purpose of salvation, except in 
God. However, I trust that my beloved young 
friends have no disposition to turn away from 
that Head and Spring of all our hopes. I think 
I can trust them for not entertaining any desire 
to build their house on any other foundation. 
I believe it is very generally known and truly 
acknowledged among us, that this is the foun- 
dation that is sure, and which no man can over- 
turn, — Christ Jesus. At the same time, I 
consider that it is a very pleasing and a neces- 
sary duty, for those who have it in their power, 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 99 

to endeavour in some degree to enlighten the 
understanding of their younger brethren and 
sisters respecting that flood of evidence which 
from every quarter is poured forth, in wondrous 
harmony, to elucidate, to establish, and forever 
to confirm and settle, the doctrine of the divinity 
of Christ. 

But, before I enter into a view of this evi- 
dence, I must just be allowed to explain the 
ground on which I am now standing. In un- 
folding the evidence of the divine authority of 
the Holy Scriptures, I have appealed exclu- 
sively to the reasoning faculty ; but when the 
divine authority of the Holy Scriptures is once 
established, we come into the dawn of childlike 
faith, and there is no sound method of argument 
left us but unfolding those passages of Scrip- 
ture which bear on particular points. Our 
only ground of evidence here is, God has said 
it, and therefore we must believe it. Lord 
Bacon — who was certainly one of the most sa- 
gacious of our species, a man of sound reason — 
says, and admirably well, that revealed theology 
is the Sabbath and haven of man's speculations ; 
and I wish my young friends may take this 
principle home with them, and never forget it. 
There is no folly in the world greater or more 
dangerous than bringing our own speculation 
to bear on the investigation of Christian doc- 
trine, instead of taking the simple words given 
to us by the Lord in his Holy Scriptures, in 
their simple meaning. We are in this respect 



100 LECTURES ON THE 

to be as new-born babes, desiring the sincere 
milk of the word, not to gratify our curiosity, 
not to puff us up with notions, but for a prac- 
tical purpose, — that we may grow thereby ; and 
the reason, the true reason, why men do not 
receive (many of them) the truths declared in 
Scripture in their native simplicity and beauty, 
is this: — that they have got into the habit of 
teaching the apostles and prophets, instead of 
being taught by them. We are to sit at the 
feet of the apostles and prophets as children, 
and we are to allow them to teach us, and re- 
ceive their lessons with all humility. And oh 
that my beloved young friends, towards whom 
my heart glows with much affection, may all of 
them be firmly built on the foundation of the 
apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself 
being the chief corner-stone ! Then they will 
be in the way of all that is true, of all that is 
happy, of all that is holy. 

Let an earnest inquirer, who desires to be 
taught by the apostles and prophets, open the 
New Testament, and he w^ill there find the de- 
lineation of that wondrous character to which 
I adverted on a former evening. He will read 
an account of an individual who performed di- 
vine works, who assumed the divine character, 
and whose character in various respects might 
truly be called superhuman, although at the 
same time he was encompassed with the natural 
infirmities of man, but without sin, — who was 
born and died a human being. The question 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 101 

immediately arises, Had this wondrous indi- 
vidual any existence before his human birth, or 
was he simply and wholly a -man, born as a 
man, and not uniting with his humanity any 
higher or more powerful nature ? Let the 
Evangelist answer this question ; let Jesus 
Christ himself, in his own gracious words, an- 
swer this question. In the first place, you 
know that John the Baptist was older by half 
a year than our blessed Saviour : and yet what 
does John the Baptist say about Christ? He 
says, " He that cometh after me was preferred 
before me, for he was before me:" therefore, 
Christ existed before John the Baptist. David, 
you know, lived about a thousand years before 
the Christian era; and yet David, in spirit, 
acknowledged Christ to be his Lord: — " The 
Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right 
hand, until I make thine enemies thy foot- 
stool:" therefore Christ was existing in some 
nature at the time of David, a thousand years 
before his incarnation. As we go backwards, 
we come to that servant of the Lord, Job, who, 
according to all probability, was of an earlier 
date than Moses, or possibly contemporary 
with him, — we may say about one thousand five 
hundred years before Christ. What does Job 
say on the subject? "Oh that my words were 
written! [you will find it in the 19th chapter;] 
oh that they were printed in a book, that they 
were graven with an iron pen, and graven in a 
rock ! I know that my Redeemer liveth, and 
9* 



102 LECTURES ON THE 

shall stand in the latter day upon the earth :" 
so that Christ was living one thousand five 
hundred years before his appearance in the 
world. Well, then, Abraham, who lived about 
one thousand nine hundred years before Christ. 
"Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw 
it, and was glad," is declared by Jesus, in the 
8th chapter of John. "Why," said the Jews, 
"thou art not yet fifty years old; and hast 
thou seen Abraham?" What was the answer? 
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abra- 
ham was, I am." In the beginning God created 
the heaven and the earth : was Christ in ex- 
istence then ? Yes, for Christ is called the 
Word by the Apostle John, in the beginning of 
his Gospel, and he says, " In the beginning was 
the Word, and the Word was with God, and 
the Word was God : the same was in the be- 
ginning with God." I shall come afterwards 
to the other part of the passage ; but here is a 
proof of his existence when heaven and earth 
were made. Did he exist before ? Read the 
words of his own prayer, in the 17th of John: 
— "And now, Father, glorify thou me, with 
the glory which I had with thee before the 
world was." There we have that point. Did 
he then exist from all eternity ? Was there 
no limit to his nature or being ? None what- 
soever. Turn to the 5th chapter of Micah, 
and there you will find, " And thou, Bethle- 
hem-Ephratah, though thou be little among 
the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall 



EVIDENCES OE CHRISTIANITY. 103 

he come forth unto me that is to be the ruler 
in Israel, whose goings forth have been from 
of old, from everlasting. " But the doctrine of 
his existing from all eternity is furthermore 
established by a remarkable passage in the 
book of Revelation, where, in the first place, 
God the Father, and afterwards our Lord 
Jesus Christ, uses language like this: — "I am 
the beginning and the ending ;" "I am the 
Alpha and the Omega," (the first and last let- 
ters in the Greek alphabet.) This expression 
is what is called a Hebraism ; for the Jews 
were accustomed to represent' the perfection of 
any thing by bringing together the first and 
last letters of the alphabet, and they used to 
say that the price was from Aleph to Tau, (the 
first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet,) 
and such other things. If a man was from 
Aleph to Tau in any particular thing, he was 
perfect in such a matter. And therefore, when 
our Saviour comes forward and says, " I am 
Alpha and Omega," it means to say with re- 
spect to duration ; for it is obvious that it re- 
spects duration. He says, " In me is the per- 
fection of duration :" that is to say, "I am the 
Eternal Being, which was, and is, and is to 
come." 

I think this is a chain of evidence which no 
man who has the slightest regard for the plain 
meaning of Scripture can by any possibility 
thwart, deny, or contradict. It is one thing 
for a man to tell me, in the face of all the 



104 LECTURES ON THE 

evidence which I have already produced, that 
the Scriptures are a forgery. Can I consider 
such a man not to be the most frivolous of his 
species, and the most absurd, unless his ab- 
surdity be exceeded by the absurdity of that 
man who on the one hand acknowledges that 
the Scriptures are genuine, and on the other 
hand rejects their plain and most prescriptive 
testimony to the divinity of Jesus Christ, or to 
any other doctrine ? Now comes the great 
question, therefore, In what nature was it that 
our blessed Saviour pre-existed? Was it in the 
nature of an archangel, of the highest of created 
beings ? No, friends ; we are in possession of 
the clearest scriptural evidence that it was in 
the nature and the being of God himself; for, 
in the first place, we have already proved our 
point by the very fact of his eternal pre- 
existence. There is but one Being who is from 
everlasting to everlasting, and that Being is 
God : and, in the next place, we find him repre- 
sented, in a most remarkable passage in the 2d 
chapter of Philippians, as not thinking it a rob- 
bery to be equal with God:— " Who, being in 
the form of God," (the word form there is the 
same, in all probability, with the word nature. 
It is the peculiar manner in which the word 
form was used in that day ; who being in the 
nature of God,) "thought it not a robbery to 
be equal with God, but, condescending from 
that high estate, made himself of no reputation, 
and took upon him the form of a servant, and 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 105 

was made in the likeness of man." But here 
is another point arising before me : — by what 
do we prove the being and omnipotence of 
God ? Is it not by pointing out the wonderful 
works of nature ? Is it not by proving, in in- 
numerable designs, the existence of an ever- 
present Designer ? All the work of the crea- 
tion is plainly ascribed to our Lord Jesus 
Christ : — " By him all things were made, and 
without him was not any thing made that was 
made." This is most definite : all things made 
by him ; not one thing in all the visible, glo- 
rious, boundless universe made without him. 
And again, in the 10th verse of the same 
chapter of John, " He came into the world, and 
the world was made by him." What can be 
more definite ? Then, in the first of Hebrews, 
" God, in these last days, hath spoken unto us 
by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all 
things, by whom also he made the world." 
And then in the first of Colossians and the 
16th verse, (and I do hope that my friends will 
record these passages on the tablets of their 
memory,) speaking of who is the image of the 
invisible God ; the first of all, (of every creature 
of the whole creation, is the meaning,) " For 
by him were all things created, whether they 
be visible or invisible, whether they be thrones, 
or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all 
things were created by him, and for him." 
What can be more explicit ? Who can doubt 
for a single moment, therefore, that he is God ? 



106 LECTURES ON THE 

But, further than that, there is the spiritual 
and internal work : there is the work of divine 
illumination, wherewith he can bestow the spirit 
of righteousness upon man ; wherewith he can 
enlighten him with the light of moral truth ; 
who with it can guide him by a heavenly light 
on his way to heaven. Could man do that? 
Could an angel do that ? Could any human 
creature do it ? No, it is the work of God 
himself, and this work is ascribed to Christ; for 
Christ is the true light, which lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world. It is often a 
matter of surprise to me that any person should 
have dared, at any time, to ascribe to our reli- 
gion any doubts respecting the divinity of our 
Lord Jesus Christ ; because that great doctrine 
which we have always so plainly advocated — 
that Christ is the light that lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world, by his Spirit — con- 
tains in itself as direct, as clear, as powerful a 
proof of his actual deity as any thing which it 
is possible to conceive. 

Now, friends, there is a branch of this sub- 
ject into the particulars of which time will not 
allow me to go, but I wish to recommend it to 
the investigation of my young friends. Abra- 
ham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs and pro- 
phets of old, were better acquainted with the 
Son of God than many of us are aware of. 
They were acquainted with a mysterious mes- 
senger of the Most High, sometimes called the 
Word, and sometimes the angel of God, who 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 107 

appeared to them on a variety of occasions, and 
who constantly in his addresses to them as- 
sumed the character, and often the name, of 
God ; as, for example, when he spoke to Hagar 
in the wilderness, and when her language in 
reply was, "Thou, God, seest me;" and as when 
he spoke to Moses in the burning bush, (it 
burnt but was not consumed,) what did he 
say? — "I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, 
and of Jacob:" and, again, when he conversed 
with Abraham on the plain of Mamre ; when he 
called to Abraham again out of heaven, w T hen 
the knife was proffered to his son:— " Now I 
know that thou fearest God, seeing that thou 
hast not withheld thy son, thy only son, from 
me" And, again, when he appeared to Gideon 
and Manoah, (the father of Samson,) and on 
many other occasions. There can be no doubt 
that it w 7 as our blessed Redeemer who was 
known by Job as the Living One, and of whom 
Jacob speaks when he says, " The angel who 
redeemed me from all evil bless the lads." Oh, 
may the angel that can alone redeem us from 
all evil bless my beloved young friends, and 
may they be his whole servants, and his faith- 
ful followers ! When all these things occurred, 
there was the visible appearance of a wondrous 
Being, who was sent of God the Father, and, 
nevertheless, claimed plainly both the attributes 
and the name of God. And can we for a 
moment doubt who this was ? There is a very 
remarkable evidence in the 3d chapter of Ma- 



108 LECTURES ON THE 

lachi : — " The Lord whom you seek shall sud- 
denly come to his temple, even the messenger 
of the covenant, (or angel, as it is in Hebrew,) 
whom ye delight in : but who shall abide the 
day of his coming, or who shall stand when he 
appears ? For he is as the refiner's fire, and 
like fullers' soap." Now, you will understand 
that the word angel simply means messenger, 
the sent of God, "the angel of the covenant;" 
and he was to come to his own temple. And 
then the apostle says, on the subject of his in- 
carnation, "In the fulness of time God sent 
forth his Son, made of a woman, made under 
the law, that he might redeem those under the 
law." This agrees with what we read in the 
1st chapter of John, and the 14th verse : — 
" The Word was made flesh and dwelt among 
us, and we beheld his glory, as the glory of the 
only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
truth." Now, there is nothing more cardinal 
in Christianity, nothing of higher import to its 
practical efficacy, than a full acknowledgment 
of the doctrine of the incarnation. It was the 
great point by which the apostles were com- 
manded to try the spirits : — " Every spirit that 
confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, 
is of God," says the apostle. Of course this 
expression would be totally inapplicable to a 
man born into the world after the usual way, 
but it applies to a Being who pre-existed in a 
higher nature, and took the nature of man upon 
him ; and that is its only possible meaning, I 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 109 

apprehend. And when we turn to the 2d of 
Hebrews, we there find that "he took not on 
him the nature of angels, but he took on him 
the seed of Abraham. " This is indeed a deep 
display, far beyond the scope of human intelli- 
gence. No man living can possibly say how it 
w 7 as ; it is one of those secrets of a divine and 
infinite Being, which must be forever hidden 
from us during our present state of existence. 
But what of that, my dear friends ? Is there 
any one of you that can tell me how the body 
and the soul are connected together ? — in what 
way their union is effected? You know the 
fact ; you cannot deny the fact ; but the how is 
beyond the scope of your investigation. And 
so the doctrine is clear, of the union of the di- 
vine and human natures in Christ. You cannot 
deny the doctrine; it gleams forth in the 
brightest characters in every page of Scripture ; 
but the how, the mode of that doctrine, is not 
a subject for human speculation. The doctrine 
is to be received with the simplicity of children, 
for its practical purposes ; and let me tell you, 
my dear friends, that on this cardinal doctrine, 
on this wonderful and mysterious union, wholly 
incomprehensible in its mode, but intelligible in 
its operations, hangs the mighty system of our 
salvation. And may we all rejoice in the re- 
membrance that Christ was man to suffer and 
to sympathize, and God to save ! 

The doctrine that Christ was really man, 
10 



110 LECTURES ON THE 

and took upon him the body and soul of a man 
when he was born a child into the world, is 
abundantly evidenced throughout the New Tes- 
tament and the Old Testament. "Unto us a 
child is born ;" and his origin was from the 
Israelites, and from the tribe of Judah, and 
from the family of David ; and his birth, of his 
virgin mother, I have already alluded to on a 
former occasion. Follow him to the well of 
Sychar, weary with his journey in that hot and 
dreary region, and mark the traces of the weak- 
ness of the man. Follow him to the garden of 
Gethsemane, and mark the deep agitation of a 
human soul: — "My soul is exceeding sorrow- 
ful, even unto death/' Follow him to Mount 
Calvary, and mark the quivering lips of the 
dying man when the words had just escaped 
them, " It is finished," and he bowed his head 
and gave up the ghost. But although, my 
beloved friends, his humanity was so clearly 
marked, it was but a veil, through which his 
divinity continued to shine on every side with 
lustrous brightness : for when he was standing 
upon earth he performed the works of God. 
When the poor leper came and bowed down at 
his feet, and said, "If thou wilt thou canst make 
me clean," — when he pronounced his own al- 
mighty fiat, and said, "I will : be thou clean," 
— he spoke, he acted, in the character of God. 
When he stood at the grave of Lazarus and, in 
his own authority, commanded the dead to rise, 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. Ill 

he spoke and he acted in the same character. 
"When, in the midst of the boisterous ocean, 
he arose and rebuked the wild and stormy 
elements of nature, — when on a single word 
of his, all was stillness and all was calm, — he 
spoke and he acted in the character of God. 

And when he raised himself from the dead 
he acted in the same character ; for it is well 
worthy of observation, that the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ is ascribed by the New Testament 
both to the Father and to the Son. The 
Father raised up the Son, and yet it is ascribed 
to the Son, who is one with him in the divine 
nature. " Destroy this temple, and after three 
days I will raise it up again;" and he spake of 
the temple of his body. Therefore, he per- 
formed the works of God. Well, but, some of 
my young friends may say, did not the apostles 
also perform the works of God ? Did not they 
■work miracles ? Yes, truly : the prophets of old, 
and the apostles, were enabled to work mira- 
cles ; but they did not work them by their 
own power, or in their own names. When 
Moses lifted up his arm over the Red Sea, the 
Lord caused the waters to flow r back. When 
Joshua uttered his memorable words, it was 
the Lord who listened to his prayer and stayed 
the bodies of heaven in their course. When 
Peter and John, at the Beautiful Gate of the 
temple, were made the means of restoring the 
poor cripple, they spoke not, they acted not, in 



112 LECTURES ON THE 

their own names, but they said, " In the name of 
Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk ;" 
and afterwards Peter declared that by His 
name, even by Him, he was restored to that 
perfect soundness in the presence of them all; 
so that the apostles went and preached, and 
the Lord Jesus worked with them, confirming 
their words by signs following. And if you 
will observe the difference between the miracles 
of our Lord and of his apostles, you will see 
in both of them holy proofs of his divinity. 
Now, as one particular instance : when the Apos- 
tle Peter stood at the bedside of Eneas, what 
did he say ? " Eneas, Jesus Christ maketh 
thee whole." Well, friends, he performed the 
works of God through Christ, — through Christ, 
who assumed the character of God when he 
said, "Before Abraham was," (he did not say 
I was;) he said, "Before Abraham was, I 
am" Here he spoke in the character of God. 
Oh, may all the world acknowledge thy word, 
that before all worlds, and from everlasting to 
everlasting, thou art God ! He spoke in the 
character of God when he said, "I am the 
resurrection and the life." He spoke in the 
character of God when he said, "I and my 
Father are one : he that hath seen me [again 
he said] hath seen the Father : how sayest 
thou, then, Show us the Father?" Thus he 
plainly assumed on these occasions, and on 
many others, the divine character ; and when, 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 113 

after his resurrection, lie breathed on his apos- 
tles, and said, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost," 
he spoke as one who could bestow the Holy 
Ghost ; he spoke as God ; and not only so, 
but he received divine homage ; he w T as the 
object of worship. When Cornelius, in his 
mistaken zeal, bowed down at the feet of 
Peter, with an act that might be called wor- 
ship, Peter said, " Stand up, for I also am a 
man." When John, dazzled by the splendour 
of the angel who talked to him, bowed down to 
worship at his feet, the language w^ent forth, 
" See thou do it not ; I am thy fellow-servant : 
worship God." But, when the apostles bowed 
in worship before their Saviour, they met with 
no rebuke ; when the wise men of the East 
came and worshipped him, it was not accounted 
to them for a sin. When the poor man who 
had been born blind first professed his faith in 
Jesus as the Son of God, and then showed his 
faith by falling down and worshipping him, he 
met with no rebuke. When the poor leper, 
sensible of his own bodily corruption, fell down 
and worshipped him, he met with no punish- 
ment for the act; he met with the blessed 
reward of his faith, and was delivered from his 
sickness. So you see, that even during the 
stay of our Lord upon earth, we have the clear- . 
est evidence of his divine character. By his 
death on the cross he burst the bonds of death 
and sin. He appears again to his disciples ; 
10* 



114 LECTURES ON THE 

he ascends into heaven, and sits down on the 
right hand of the Majesty on high. 

And here, in describing his glorious reign, 
the sacred writers represent him as possessing 
divine power and supreme authority over all 
beings. All power is given to him in heaven 
and in earth, far above all principalities, and 
powers, and might, and dominion, and every 
name that is named, not only in this world, but 
also in that which is to come ; that at the name 
of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in 
heaven and things in earth. Now, here is an 
authority by which he rules over the universe, 
and which it is impossible he should possess 
unless he. were God. Then he is described as 
the Author of grace, — grace, the most precious 
of all God's gifts ; grace, by which our sinful 
souls are renovated and saved. The grace of 
our Lord Jesus Christ be with our spirits! 
Then he is described as the object of prayer : 
Stephen addressed his prayers to the glorified 
Redeemer, when on the point of death he said, 
" Lay not this sin to their charge ;" and, again, 
"Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." But we are 
taught, friends, that the hour is coming when 
Christ will appear again for the judgment of 
the quick and dead, — when the Son of man 
shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels 
with him ; and, while the Scriptures plainly 
declare that even in his reign in the day of 
judgment he is the Son of man, still a friend 






EVIDENCES OF CHKISTIANITY. 115 

and a brother to sympathize, they also bear, 
in reference to this subject, the clearest testi- 
mony to his divine attributes. Now, can you 
conceive, friends, is it possible for any man to 
imagine, a stronger proof of the omnipotence 
of God, than will be displayed by the resurrec- 
tion of the dead, by the changing those innu- 
merable spiritual bodies, like unto the body of 
our Lord himself, which shall be, at the collec- 
tion of the spirits of the just, made perfect to 
all eternity ? Yet this act is ascribed to Jesus 
Christ: — "I am the bread of life, and I will 
raise them up at the last day;" and again, in 
the 3d chapter of Philippians: — "Our conver- 
sation is in heaven, from whence also we look 
for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who 
shall change our vile body, that it may be 
fashioned like unto his glorious body, according 
to the power wherewith he is able to subdue 
all things unto himself." What can be more 
explicit ? 

Then all judgment is committed to him:— 
"We shall all stand before the judgment-seat 
of Christ:" and how is it possible that any 
being whose intelligence is less than divine can 
penetrate all the thoughts, all the actions, all 
the words, of all mankind ? No ; it is in the 
character of God that Jesus Christ speaks, 
when he says, in the 2d chapter of the book of 
Revelation, " I am he which searcheth the 
reins and hearts ; and I will give unto every 



116 LECTURES ON THE 

one of you according to your works.' ' And, 
last of all, as to him is ascribed the creation of 
all things visible, so he is also represented as 
folding them up as a vesture, and bringing all 
things visible to their end. You find, in the 
first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
" Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the 
foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the 
work of thy hands; they shall perish, but thou 
endurest, and they all shall wax old as a gar- 
ment, and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, 
and they shall be changed, but thou art the 
same, and thy years shall not fail." If any 
man will take the trouble of reflecting on this 
wondrous line of evidence which I have now 
endeavoured to unfold, and will trace' it from 
its beginning to its end, and observe the agree- 
ment of one part with another, he will find i 
a line, a chain, a series and order of evidence 
which has no parallel. 

But there is one point which I have withheld 
from your view : — that, while we have this won- 
drous chain of evidence respecting the divine 
attributes of Christ, in every stage of his re- 
vealed history, we also find that he was called 
by the name of God, and that it was directly 
declared that he was God ; and this crowns my 
whole argument. It is singularly satisfactory, 
and worthy of our close remark, that the name 
of God, or the name of Jehovah, is applied in 
Scripture to our Lord Jesus Christ, in reference 



v 

a 






EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 117 

to all the successive stages of his history. In 
the first place, we read, in the 1st chapter of 
John, " In the beginning was the Word, and 
the Word was with God, and the Word was 
God." There the name is most plainly as- 
cribed to Christ in his pre-existence ; to which 
many passages might be added from the history 
of the angel of the covenant. Then take his 
birth: — "A virgin shall conceive and bear a 
son, and shall call his name Immanuel, which, 
being interpreted, is, God with us." " Unto us 
a child is born, unto us a son is given ; and his 
name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the 
mighty God," (9th chapter of Isaiah.) Then 
take his tarriance on earth : what says John 
the Baptist of our Saviour ? — " I am the voice 
of one crying in the wilderness," (John came to 
prepare for the ministry of Christ.) " Prepare 
ye the way of the LORD," (that is', the LORD 
in large letters, which always stands for Jeho- 
vah ;) " I am the voice of one crying in the 
wilderness, Prepare ye the way of JEHOVAH." 
He was made manifest by his incarnation, and 
by his outward ministry to the people. And 
what says the apostle in the 3d chapter of 
Timothy ? — a passage on which I wish to ob- 
serve, that the genuineness of it, though once 
disputed, is now brought out, by subsequent 
critical inquiry, with resistless force and illumi- 
nation : — " Great is the mystery of godliness ; 
God was manifest in the flesh, justified by the 



118 LECTURES ON THE 

Spirit, (proved to be divine, that is, by his mi- 
raculous -works.) seen of angels, preached unto 
the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received 
up into glory." It is clear, when we come 
even to the mysterious moment of his death, 
(and we know that he could die only as man,) 
that his divine character is asserted even in re- 
ference to this point, in the book of Zechariah : — 
"And they shall look upon me whom they have 
pierced, (saith Jehovah.) and they shall mourn 
for him as a man mourneth for his only son, 
and they shall be in bitterness for him, as a man 
who is in bitterness for his first-born." Then 
his resurrection after his death. You remem- 
ber the unbelieving Thomas : when our Lord 
showed him his wounded side and hands, 
Thomas no longer dared to doubt, but answered 
and said unto him, " My Lord and my God." 
"Was this profession of faith acceptable to Jesus ? 
Yes. ** Thomas, because thou hast seen me 
thou hast believed; blessed are they which have 
not seen and yet have believed." 

Then we come to his glorious reign ; and 
there we have abundant passages : for example, 
" A king shall reign in righteousness." In the 
23d chapter of Jeremiah, "I will raise unto 
David a righteous branch, and a king shall 
reign and prosper, and execute judgment and 
justice on the earth. And this is the name 
whereby he shall be called : the Lord (that is, 
Jehovah) our righteousness." With this pas- 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 119 

sage we compare another, and it is one among 
a selection with which I may very well close 
my chain of evidence. In the 9th chapter of 
the Epistle to the Eomans, where the apostle 
mourns over his Jewish countrymen, and where 
he describes their many privileges, he says, 
"Whose was the glory, and the adoption, and 
the covenants, and the giving of the law, and 
the service of God, and the promises ; whose are 
the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the 
flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed 
forever." I wish just to observe, that after a 
long, and I may say studious, examination of 
the subject, according to my opportunities 
and ability, I can say in truth, to the best of 
my knowledge and belief, that not one of the 
passages which I have this night quoted is 
fairly capable, on any critical grounds, of a 
different interpretation than I have now given 
to it. And I would observe, as a very satisfac- 
tory circumstance, that many of the ancient 
fathers of the Church, who wrote in Greek, — 
that is, in the very language in which these 
passages are given,— always used them in the 
same way, and gave them that interpretation 
which I have now done. They gave the original 
Greek, applying it just as I would translate it ; 
and it is, in fact, capable of no other transla- 
tion, and no other meaning: therefore do not 
for a moment be misled by any person who 
dares to say, that such and such a passage, 



120 LECTURES ON THE 

describing the divinity of Christ, is capable of 
a different interpretation ; for, in point of fact, 
the more the subject is investigated, the more 
all the niceties of the language are known, the 
more we go into the critical particulars of such 
passages, the more is the only plain and ortho- 
dox interpretation established beyond all possi- 
ble contradiction. And therefore you see the 
point to which we are brought: we prove the 
divine authority of the Holy Scriptures ; we 
plainly prove that the doctrine of Scripture is 
the divinity of Christ, and therefore we are 
compelled, not only by the obligation of the 
Christian believer, but we are compelled by the 
principles of reason, of inductive philosophy, of 
common sense, to accept with the utmost readi- 
ness, to embrace with the greatest credulity, 
the glorious doctrine of the divinity of Christ : 
and may there not be a single individual in this 
interesting assembly who shall ever turn his 
back on this greatest and most sublime truth, 
the very centre and spring of man's sal- 
vation ! 

Before we separate, I wish to advert to 
another doctrine, most intimately connected 
with that of the divinity of Christ, and of equal 
importance in a practical point of view, freely 
acknowledged by all who are called orthodox 
Christians, more and more confirmed, valued, 
and cherished, by all who love the truth and 
know their own sinfulness. I mean this doc- 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 121 

trine: — that Jesus Christ, being clothed with 
humanity, died on the cross to be a propitiation, 
or a sacrifice, for the sins of the whole world, 
the just for the unjust, that he might bring us 
to God; that he bore the penalty which was 
due to us, and that by his stripes we are healed. 
And the forgiveness of sin is attained by poor, 
sinful man, when he comes with a penitent 
heart and believes in the Lord Jesus Christ 
who died for his sins. This doctrine is plainly 
declared by our Saviour himself, again and 
again: — "As Moses lifted up the serpent in 
the wilderness, so shall the Son of man be 
lifted up, that whosoever believeth on him 
might not perish, but have eternal life." Again 
he said, " The Son of man came not to be mi- 
nistered unto, but to minister, and to give his 
life a ransom for many." This is no new doc- 
trine : when he came upon earth, it had been, 
to a certain extent, witnessed before ; the Jews 
had always been accustomed to the shadow of 
it, and doubtless some of the more enlightened 
of them had a sort of notion of the substance 
of it, though it might be a slight notion. But 
when Abel offered a better sacrifice than Cain, 
when animal food was not permitted to man, 
and when there was no apparent meaning in 
slaying an innocent lamb, he slew a lamb, and 
that was called a better sacrifice of faith: there 
was an expressive figure of that blessed truth, 
of which that shadow was fulfilled. When 
11 



1'22 LECTURES OX THE 

Abraham, instead of taking the lamb, was about 
.orifice his ohly-t hea at 

last he plunged his knife into the ram caught 
in the was it? It was fcype, a 

figure :: of Christ. morn- 

ing ;,_. ~. : nine in the morning and 

r in the "-. day after day. month 

after moD ter year, century after cen- 

tury, ib of the burnt-offering, the spot- 

less male :i a year old. was slain in the 

temple, aiway .ss, always pure. 

it? Was there any real efficacy in the 
of those animals, or were they a shadow of 
g :■:■:! :ki: : Were they no; expres- 

sive : ivea of that one sacrifice which 

i ed for all them that are sanc- 
tified *: When on the great day of atonement, 
(16th chapter of Leviticus.) the tenth day of 
the seventh month, now called September. 
ninth month, as we should call it.; — wri- 
the tenth of that month, on the great day of 
atonement, the high-priest went into the holy 
of h: blood of the bull and the 

Hock sacrificed for his sin. and the 
the people.; and sprinkled 
the mere; ::h their blood; when he con- 

■ people over the head of 
the sca| r-_ ..:. and the other goat finds its way 
an unknown land, and takes away (in a 
figurative sense | the sins of the people with 
him; when the high-priest, before this cere- 






EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 123 

mony, divested himself of his gorgeous robes 
and clothed himself in humble linen garments, 
and the victim was burnt without the camp ; 
and, when the whole ceremony was over, the 
high-priest again invested himself in the gor- 
geous robes he wore before, — do not you un- 
derstand it ? Are there any of my dear young 
friends who do not know enough of the ever- 
blessed truth to read these types ? who cannot 
see a most expressive representation of the 
mighty scheme? The high-priest unclothed 
himself of his glorious garments ; Christ comes 
down from his glory in heaven. The high- 
priest clothes himself in humble, lowly, linen 
garments, holy and pure; Christ took t upon 
him the lowly nature of man. The high-priest 
sacrifices a bullock and a goat, for his own sins 
and the sins of the people ; Christ offered up 
himself his own precious blood, and sprinkles 
that upon the mercy-seat. The victim is burnt 
without the camp ; Christ was crucified without 
the walls of Jerusalem. The scape-goat carries 
away the sins of the people to an unknown 
land and uninhabited. And what said John 
the Baptist of Christ ? — " Behold the Lamb of 
God, who taketh away the sin of the world." 
And, friends, if you will come with a penitent 
and obedient heart, and truly believe on the 
crucified Immanuel, he will bear away all your 
sins, though they may be red like scarlet, as it 
were, into an unknown land and uninhabited, — 



124 LECTURES ON THE 

blessed be his name ! And there is your only 
means of reconciliation ; there is no other way 
to the Father, — to happiness, — to peace. Oh, 
may you all come home to Christ ; may you 
cast the burden of your sins on him, and may 
you be individually invested in that white robe 
which was made so white as no fuller on earth 
could whiten it, because it was washed and 
made white in the blood of the Lamb ! 

We come now to the words of prophecy : and 
oh, how wonderful they are, friends ! I was 
speaking of the prophecy of the 53d chapter 
of Isaiah, — a prophecy of the truth of our re- 
ligion : — " All we, like sheep, have gone astray, 
and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of 
us all. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter. 
By his knowledge shall my righteous servant 
justify many.'' Never was language more 
precise, more definite ; never was language less 
capable of a double interpretation. All is here 
unfolded to us ; the great doctrine that Christ 
bore the iniquities of us all upon him, and that 
we reap the reward, is here unfolded ; and may 
it ever be precious to all our souls ! 

When we open the pages of the New Testa- 
ment, does it not break upon us with a light 
unparalleled by the invention of man? Does 
it not abound in every page of the apostles' 
writings ? When Paul once knew that Christ 
was his Saviour, it seems as if he could scarcely 
avoid the perpetual mention of the subject. "I 






EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 125 

determined not to know any thing, save Jesus 
Christ, and him crucified/' " All have sinned,' ' 
says he, in the 3d chapter of his Epistle to the 
Romans, " and come short of the glory of God." 
"Being justified freely by his grace, through 
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom 
God hath set forth to be a propitiation through 
faith in his blood, for the forgiveness of sins 
that are past, through the forbearance of God." 
And Peter, in his 1st chapter, says, " Ye were 
not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver 
and gold, but by the precious blood of Christ, 
as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." 
John says, "He is a propitiation for our sins," 
(the word propitiation is the same word in the 
Greek, and answers to that word in the He- 
brew which in the Old Testament was always 
translated atonement; and propitiation and 
atonement are synonymous ;) therefore, "He is 
an atonement for our sins;" (a sacrificial offer- 
ing is the meaning of it;) "a propitiation for 
our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins 
of the whole world." And mark those words, 
"For the sins of the whole world;" for it is the 
grand doctrine of Christianity, that Christ died 
for the sins of all mankind. Then turn to the 
Hebrews, and there you find that beautiful 
comparison between the shadow of the law and 
the substance of the gospel, which confirms and 
elucidates the whole subject in a most glorious 
manner : — "If the blood of bulls and goats, and 
11* 



126 LECTURES ON THE 

the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, 
sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how 
much more shall the blood of Christ, who 
through the eternal Spirit offered himself with- 
out spot to Gcd, purge your conscience from 
dead works, to serve the living God!" I 
might go from passage to passage, from writer 
to writer, and from book to book, till time 
would fail me; but, finally, let us remember 
that glorious vision of the Apostle John, when 
he saw the innumerable company of the re- 
deemed, around the throne, gathered out of 
every kindred, and tongue, and people. And 
wherewith were they clothed? They were 
clothed in white robes. And who were they ? 
"They are they," said the angel, "who have 
come out of great tribulation, and washed their 
robes, and made them white in the blood of the 
Lamb." 

Well, friends, if you desire, as unquestionably 
you do, to join that harmonious, glorious com- 
pany, see that there be in you the simplicity 
and strength of the Christian faith; go, wash 
your robes in the blood of the Lamb. I cannot 
allow myself to conclude, without shortly point- 
ing out the inseparable connection between these 
two doctrines. When a man once denies the 
divinity of Jesus Christ, he soon begins to deny 
the doctrine of the atonement. No man can 
entertain any proper view of the doctrine of 
atonement, unless he also admits the divinity 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 127 

of Christ. Mere man cannot atone for his 
brother. An angel, an archangel, the highest 
of created intelligences, cannot bear the burden 
of universal sin. No, it is a burden which om- 
nipotence alone can bear, and therefore here is 
a refuge, and here is a strength, and a joy, 
that he who was, and is, God forever, was made 
man, that he might die on the cross to save us, 
and through a loving faith in his blood we may 
live to all eternity. And by what possible 
means, my dear friends, could God so clearly 
display his abhorrence of sin as by appointing 
his own Son to be the only sacrifice for sin ? 
On the other hand, by what possible means 
could God display his mercy to the sinner with 
so much brilliancy and strength as by sending 
his own Son into the world to die for sinners ? 
So that in this glorious dispensation the holi- 
ness and love of God are met together ; right- 
eousness and peace have kissed each other ; 
and the divine attributes, without being con- 
fused, are blended in matchless beauty and 
matchless splendour ; and I am bold to say, that 
there is nothing which has ever been presented 
to the attention of man, which throws so glo- 
rious a light on the holiness and on the love of 
God, as the joint and inseparable doctrines of 
the divinity and atonement of Jesus Christ. 
And therefore, friends, let us rejoice in this 
foundation ; let us be strong and immovable in 
the faith once delivered to the saints ; let us 



128 EVIDENCES OF CHKISTIANITY. 

never veer to the right hand or to the left ; let 
us imbibe these things with true simplicity; 
but oh, friends, let us remember that these 
things are to bear on our affections, they are 
to take hold of our love, they are to bring our 
love into action, they are to lead us, by the 
cords of love, into the path of obedience and 
into the way of holiness; and thus we become 
new creatures in Christ Jesus : and how, friends ? 
Not by our own power ; not by our own de- 
vising ; not by our own imagination ; not by the 
mere exercise of the understanding ; but by the 
agency of God's Holy Spirit on the soul of man. 
I have occupied the attention of my dear young 
friends long enough. Oh that what has now 
been said may fall deeply into many a memory, 
many a mind, and many a heart ! But it is my 
intention, if the Lord permit, to occupy another 
evening, in the course of next week, in order to 
unfold the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and 
especially to show to my young friends how 
remarkably scriptural were the views which the 
early Friends were enlightened to take on this 
doctrine. I conceive that many of them would 
like to have a little information, and I propose, 
therefore, if life and health permit, to go into 
the scriptural view of the doctrine of the Spirit, 
when we next meet together. Oh that we may 
all be the spiritually-minded followers of the 
crucified and risen and glorified Immanuel ! 



FOURTH LECTURE. 



ON THE 

INFLUENCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, 

AND THE 

featliroiies at % jgfoattg at Jruittoi. 



Although it is my particular wish to avoid 
confusing meetings of the description that are 
now gathered, with meetings for worship in the 
highest sense of the term, I am thankful for the 
remarks that we have had this evening, and I 
wish just to say, in the first instance, that I am 
fully convinced that nothing can qualify us for 
any religious service but the Lord's Holy Spirit. 
There are, it is very true, a diversity of gifts, 
and the same person may be called upon at 
different times to exercise different gifts ; and 
the Apostle Paul distinguishes between the 
gifts of preaching and teaching ; but I wish ex- 
plicitly to state that, as an individual, I dare 
not engage in what I apprehend to be the exer- 

129 



130 Licirr.is :~ :zz 

E of either of the-e gifts, otherwise than in 
simple dependence on the Lord's anointing, and 
I m lear friends to understand, tha: 

would on no account appoint a meeting of this 
ription, did I not find it laid upon me as a 
duty arising at that specific time, and under 
a direct pointing to that specific object. I 
thought these words of explanation were du: 
mv dear friends, that :here might be no mis- 
understanding on what I apprehend to h 
simple subje::. I consider it a privilege to 
; e the opportunity afforded me, under what 
It: -ure of the best means, of 

communicating information to my belo 
young friends on the most important of all 

::me has now elapsed since we 
met in this way, that my friends will, I tr. 
allow me just to refer shortly to the other even- 
's which _::her. On the ft 
rting, I waa led to unfold the hi evi- 
dence of the genxdiir uesfi : S eipture, and the 
truth of the miracles, and the evidence afforded, 
by the miracles themselves, of the divine orL 
of our holy religion. On the next occasion 
considered together the : f prophecy and 
fulfilment, and the internal evidence of the 
Christian religion ; and I tr b made fully 
apparent to those who were present on those 

sible to e 
any moral evidence more strong, more divei^i- 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 131 

fied, or more harmonious, than that which 
proves the truth of the Christian religion. On 
the third evening which we passed together, I 
endeavoured to give some information to my 
dear young friends respecting the evidence 
contained in the Scriptures themselves, of these 
cardinal and most important doctrines, — the 
eternal divinity and atoning sacrifice of our 
Lord Jesus Christ ; because I am well aware 
that the great object of Scripture was to testify 
of Christ ; and I do delight in endeavouring to 
lay before my young friends the vast, harmo- 
nious, and most explicit chain of evidence 
which proves the truth of these doctrines, as 
doctrines of Scripture. I did at that time make 
an application, not only to the understanding, 
but more especially to the memories, of my 
young friends, and I trust the labour has not 
been lost in this respect ; I trust the substance 
of this evidence has been remembered, and 
through the memory it may find its way to the 
heart, where alone true faith has its residence, — 
saving faith. And now my present object is to 
endeavour to unfold another most important 
and cardinal doctrine of religion, and to show 
the evidence on which it rests: I mean the 
doctrine of the Holy Spirit ; and if we should 
be favoured to get clearly through this subject, 
my young friends will then be left, I trust, w T ith 
a clear general view upon their minds of all that 
is essential, of all that is important, or pecu-. 



132 LECTURES OX THE 

liarly important, of those doctrines which are 
written in the Holy Scriptures for our learning, 
and which immediately affect the greatest of all 
points, — the salvation of our souls. 

In treating on this part of the subject, I shall 
have to advert in the course of the evening to 
the sentiments and principles of the religious 
Society of Friends, and to many of those views 
which at present distinguish them from other 
Christian bodies. In doing this, my object is 
not to enter into controversy, for I believe con- 
troversy will never do us good: my object is 
to elucidate the subject to the minds of my 
voun^er brethren and sisters, and to endeavour 
to show them that our views are not in their 
nature sectarian, but that they are simple views 
of the religion of Jesus, as it is plainly con- 
tained in the Xew Testament. The more we 
know of religion, the less we shall value names, 
sects, and parties ; but I trust the more my 
vounsr friends examine the contents of the Xew 
Testament with care and impartiality, the more 
they will be confirmed in the root and ground 
of the Christian testimonies, and the more 
forcibly they will feel impelled, with a greater 
degree of magnanimity, to take up their cross 
in all these matters, and follow the Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

When our blessed Saviour was about to leave 
his disciples and to ascend to his native glory, 
he gave them a commission to baptize all 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 133 

nations into the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost. I shall after- 
wards, I believe, find occasion to show that, 
according to my view of the subject, the bap- 
tism which was here communicated to the dis- 
ciples was one of a purely spiritual nature. It 
was, as I believe, the baptism of the Word 
preached; and by the living and powerful 
ministry they were to baptize their hearers, not 
in the name, but, as the original has it, into 
the name, of the Father, and of the Son, and 
of the Holy Ghost. But the point to which I 
wish to solicit the attention of my young friends, 
on the present occasion, is this : — that they are 
not only to be baptized into the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, but also into the name 
of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, as well 
as the Father and Son, is an object of the 
Christian faith and of the Christian allegiance. 
Now, it is very evident that in this passage the 
Father is described as the Divine Being, the 
Son is described in the same character, and the 
Holy Ghost is also described in the same cha- 
racter. We cannot suppose for a moment that 
the Father and the Son should here be men- 
tioned in what we may call their personal cha 
racter, and that the Holy Ghost should here be 
mentioned only as an influence, — as a thing, 
however valuable, or however heavenly. No, 
friends ; a plain interpretation of this passage, 
according to the law of sound criticism and 
12 



LECTURES ON THE 

kense, involves the doctrine that the Holy 
Ghost is God ; and this is one of those funda- 
mental doctrines which, I am happy to assert, 
was always maintained with clearness and in- 
tegrity by our forefathers in the truth. 

There are many other passages of Scripture 
which confirm this important doctrine. Do we 
not read that when Paul and Barnabas were 
sent forth in the work of the ministry, the Holy 
Ghost said unto the persons who were then as- 
sembled, " Separate me Paul and Barnabas for 
the work whereunto I have called them" ? Do 
we not read in the epistles of Paul, in the 12th 
chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, 
that "The Holy Ghost divideth his gifts to 
every man severally as he willeth"? And 
when we examine the 14th, 15th, and 16th 
chapters of John's Gospel, we shall find the 
Holy Ghost promised to the disciples in the 
name of the Comforter; and it is expressly as- 
sertdd that he should not speak of himself, but 
that as he should hear so should he speak ; that 
he should take of the things of Christ and show 
them to the believer; and that he should guide 
us into all truth. Again, the Lord Jesus said 
to the woman of Samaria, "God is a Spirit ;" 
and hence it plainly follows, by the converse of 
the proposition, that the Spirit is God. With- 
out pursuing a lengthened line of argument 
upon this point, I wish to impress it- on the 
minds of all my young friends, as of essential 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 135 

importance ; and I trust that every individual 
present will indeed be baptized into the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost, one God, blessed forever. 

Are there any of you who, because this doc- 
trine is beyond the reach of human reason, are 
therefore ready to conclude that it cannot be 
received ? This would be vain reasoning indeed : 
it is a doctrine not contrary to reason, but be- 
yond it. There is one point of view in which 
God is one ; there is another point of view in 
which he is three, — Father, Son, and Spirit ; 
and how these things are, what is the mode of 
this doctrine, which is not revealed to us, is 
beyond the utmost reach of our faculties; for 
God is an infinite and incomprehensible Being, 
and the secret things belong unto the Lord, but 
the things which are revealed belong unto us 
and to our children to do them ; and what we 
want to know is but the way in which these 
high and holy doctrines affect the great object 
of the soul's salvation ; and while they are 
utterly beyond the scope of human philosophy, 
in their practical application they are clear 
to the simple-hearted believer. They were 
cordially received, they have been cordially 
received, by men of the most stupendous intel- 
lect, — for instance, by such a man as Lord 
.Bacon ; and. they are cordially received by the 
•cottager, who only returns from his day's labour 
to read his chapter in the Bible in the evening, 



136 LECTURES ON THE 

and even by the child at school. The mode of 
these things is as much beyond the intellectual 
powers of a Bacon or a Newton, as it is beyond 
the intellectual power of a little child ; but the 
practical application of them for the good pur- 
pose of the soul's salvation is equally clear to 
both. In fact, these things are apprehended 
by simple faith ; and, having already proved 
that the Holy Scriptures are given by inspira- 
tion of God, and contain pure truth without 
any mixture, true philosophy and the soundest 
reason most obviously demand our accepting 
the contents of Scripture in simple faith ; and 
oh that the faith of my beloved young friends 
may be confirmed, settled, and established in 
God the Father, God the Son, and God the 
Holy Ghost, blessed forever ! 

I think I have already had the opportunity 
of pointing out those passages which prove 
that Jesus Christ died for the sins of all men. 
The Father would have all men to be saved 
and come to the knowledge of his truth p the 
Son, in his human nature, died for all men ; 
and I believe that there is plain and sufficient 
evidence in Scripture that the Holy Spirit 
enlightens and visits all men : and here the 
whole truth is preserved in what we may call 
even balance, and one part corresponds* with 
another, and there is a beautiful harmony 
throughout, and the whole proclaims the glo- 
rious universality and perfect impartiality of 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 137 

the love of Jesus. Although at the same time 
we are perfectly aware that God is an omnipo- 
tent sovereign and disposes of us as he pleases, 
and we are not to inquire into his matters or to 
sit in judgment on the works of his providence, 
— and though we see but a very few links of 
an endless, boundless chain, of which we are 
totally incapable of forming any conception, — 
nevertheless, I do hold that this doctrine of the 
universal operation of the Spirit of the Lord is 
one of primary importance. I know it was 
boldly advocated in the face of the world by 
early Friends. I know that it has been since 
maintained steadfastly in every age of our 
religious society ; and I hope, friends, it will 
always be precious to us, not because it is an 
opinion of our division of the church of Christ, 
but because it rests, as I believe, on the broad, 
immutable basis of simple truth ; and so far is 
it from being peculiar to Friends, that I be- 
lieve and know that thousands and tens of 
thousands are increasingly prepared to adopt 
the blessed doctrine of the universality of 
spiritual light. I can hardly refrain from 
saying, that on two very interesting occasions, 
when I was conversing in private with the late 
William Wilberforce, he assured me of his own 
conviction that an effective offer of salvation, 
was made to every man born into the world. 
I thought it a good testimony from a person so 
well known in what is justly called the evan- 
12* 



138 LECTURES ON THE 

gelical world. And how should an effective 
offer of salvation be made to every man born 
into the world, but by the light of the Holy 
Spirit ? My young friends may probably wish 
for more scriptural information on the subject; 
and, were I requested to point out one passage 
of Scripture which contains, in my opinion, a 
proof of the truth, in never-to-be-forgotten and 
very comprehensive words, I would point out 
that memorable passage in the beginning of 
John's Gospel ; for in speaking of Christ in 
his divine character, in his original, eternal 
divinity, he says, "In him was life, and the 
life was the light of men." "That was the 
true light, which lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world." These expressions 
are very precise, and they are elucidated by 
the Jewish literature of the day ; for it was a 
common Jewish phrase to describe every exist- 
ing mortal, man, woman, or child, to say, 
"every man born into the world." It was 
their current expression for this purpose, and 
peculiarly definite and precise in its meaning ; 
and here is a declaration that Christ was the 
true light, that lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world. Now, we know that as a 
revealer of truth in an external point of view 
he was the light of the world ; and when, in 
the fulness of time, he took upon him our 
nature and revealed the glorious gospel, it was 
like the rising of the morning sun, scattering 



EVIDENCES OE CHRISTIANITY. 139 

all the shadows of night and of twilight. Let 
us never disparage that glorious light for a 
moment ; but we know that the light of an 
outward revelation, up to the time when the 
apostle wrote these sentences, was very par- 
tially communicated to the children of men, 
and we may therefore safely conclude — nay, 
we must conclude — that there was some other 
respect in which Christ was the light which 
lighteth every man born into the world. And 
how could this be ? There is but one way in 
which we can explain it ; namely, that by his 
Spirit he doth give some light to all the chil- 
dren of men. 

Now, this subject is fully developed, as I 
apprehend, in the 1st, 2d, and 3d chapters of 
the Epistle to the Romans, where the Apostle 
Paul is speaking of the degeneracy, the idola- 
try, and the wickedness of the Gentile world. 
On what grounds does the apostle convict the 
Gentile world of sin ? What is sin ? Sin is the 
transgression of the law. What law were those 
Gentiles in possession of? They might indeed 
derive some faint traces of it from original 
tradition, and I do not doubt that they did. 
Some of their most inquisitive philosophers 
might probably borrow some rays of light 
from their Jewish neighbours, though the Jews 
were very little known : probably they did. 
But the plainest argument upon which he con- 
vinces them of sin rests on the broad basis that 



140 LECTURES ON THE 

some light was bestowed upon them, which 
gave them each their responsibility to a supe- 
rior Being; and he expressly says, " that which 
is known of God was manifest in them ; it was 
manifest in their consciences ;" and I believe 
there is no man living, whose intellectual facul- 
ties are in any degree developed, who does not 
feel, in spite of himself, that he is responsible 
for his actions to a superior Being, — to one 
who will be his Judge, and who will reward or 
punish him according to his works. But not 
only so ; there was a moral law known to 
these Gentiles ; for the apostle expressly says, 
that though they knew the just judgments of 
God, that those who do these things (speaking 
of their criminal practices) are worthy of death, 
yet they not only did them, but rejoiced in all 
who did the same ; or words to that effect. 
How did they know those just judgments of 
God ? How did they know this righteous rule ? 
(as the words may be rendered.) Why, it was 
written upon their hearts ; and in the next 
chapter the apostle still further unfolds this 
subject, and speaks of many of the Gentiles 
who actually did the works of the law, though 
they were without the law in its outward reve- 
lation. They did by nature, without any out- 
ward revelation, the things contained in the 
law, " which shows the works of the law writ- 
ten on their hearts," says the apostle, "their 
consciences also bearing them witness, and 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 141 

their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else 
excusing one another.'' And he even describes 
them as justified by their faith : they believed 
in Jesus as far as he was revealed to them, and 
they proved their faith by their works, and his 
law was written on their hearts. 

Now, when we take into view the great doc- 
trine of human corruption, that man is utterly 
corrupt, and dead in all wickedness, — if we call 
to mind the same apostle's declaration, "I 
know that in me (that is to say, in my flesh, 
my carnal mind) there dwelleth no good thing," 
— how are we to account for this very good 
thing which is written on his heart ? How are 
we to account for the law of God written on the 
hearts of men ? the law which is holy and just 
and pure, and, though it may shine very faintly, 
is always the same in its nature ? Are we to 
solicit this at man's carnal hand? Is it a sys- 
tem which man may work for himself? No: 
the internal principles of the moral law shine 
by their own light ; they are the invention of 
no human reasoning; they are the discovery 
of no human philosophy ; it is a light bestowed 
upon all the children of men, not belonging to 
their corrupt and carnal nature, in which there 
is no good thing, but given to them, as we 
believe, (and, I trust, shall always believe,) 
through the redemption which is in Jesus Christ. 
He purchased it for them by that precious 
offering which he made on the cross for the sins 



142 LECTURES ON THE 

of all mankind. Oh, what a blessed boon ! and 
what a most comforting and satisfactory doc- 
trine ! that we not only receive the forgiveness 
of sin through the blood of Jesus, but the same 
precious blood-shedding has procured for us the 
universal light of God's Holy Spirit, shining in 
various degrees and various measures, — very 
faintly in some cases, but always the same in 
its nature. 

It is sometimes observed, that some of the 
poor heathen, who are in an extremely degraded 
state, know very little of this law ; and cer- 
tainly the light appears to shine very faintly in 
them. But their rational faculties are not de- 
veloped ; they are like very little children in 
that respect ; some may be compared to idiots: 
and this blessed light is bestowed upon us as 
rational creatures, and it is as the rational 
faculties come to be developed that the moral 
principle also shows itself. I was thinking of a 
remarkable conversation which took place be- 
tween a Baptist missionary of my acquaintance, 
and some poor Hindoos, with reference to this 
subject. Their rational faculties are much more 
developed than those of the original inhabitants 
of New South Wales : they are very prone to 
reason. He was preaching to a company of 
those persons on the subject of sin. " What is 
sin?" said one of them. "Sin, my brother, is 
the transgression of the law T ," said the preacher. 
"But what law do you mean ? I do not admit 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 143 

your Bible, neither do you admit mine." " But 
I will tell you what law I mean. When you 
go to the fair, or to the market-place, and 
cheat, or lie, or steal, you feel that there is 
something within you that tells you that it is 
wrong : that is the law I mean ; sin is the trans- 
gression of that law." "Oh, now r , brother," 
said he, "I admit your argument is right;" 
and so the dispute was easily settled. 

There are some very interesting passages in 
the works of the ancient Greek and Roman 
philosophers, in reference to this subject : I 
wish my young friends were well acquainted 
with them. I am not going to compare them 
with the broad daylight of the gospel ; but still 
those persons had some light, and they had 
more light than can be accounted for by any 
thing short of a few rays from the blessed 
source of the Sun of righteousness. I remember 
one passage in Cicero more particularly, which 
I think peculiarly interesting. I cannot now 
repeat it exactly, but he tells us that there is a 
law w T hich deters from crime on the one hand, 
and impels to duty on the other ; which no man 
can alter, to which nothing can be added; 
which can never be abrogated ; which is not one 
thing at one time and one thing at another, one 
thing at Rome and another thing at Athens ; 
but, says he, the same eternal and comprehen- 
sive law, of the same eternal and unchanging 
God, comprehends all men in all ages; and 



144 LECTURES ON THE 

those who refuse to obey that God who is the 
institutor of this law involve themselves in cer- 
tain misery and penal consequences, although 
they may escape what the world calls punish- 
ment. Now, what a luminous passage ! And 
shall we pretend to deny the existence of this 
law ? I hope, friends, we shall more and more 
feel the importance of it, and that we shall re- 
member not only that this light truly shines in 
the heart of man, but that it is our bounden 
duty — nay, it is our very life — to obey it ; and 
those who follow the light which is given to 
them will have more light ; and they will be led 
from one degree of virtue to another, by the 
power of the Lord's Spirit ; for not only is 
there the universal diffusion of moral light, but 
there is also the additional visitation of divine 
power connected with it. I believe that every 
man born into the world has his day of visita- 
tion ; and I apprehend that it is the plain doc- 
trine of Scripture, contained in the passage to 
which I have now referred, that Christ, by his 
Spirit, is that true light which lighteth every 
man that is born into the world. And if this is 
not plain reasoning and plain evidence, (and if 
it doth not coincide with common expressions, 
I know not what can be plainer or more con- 
sistent with that expression,) I know not 
what is. 

But, while we speak of the universal opera- 
tion of the influence of the Holy Spirit, we do 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 145 

not forget for one moment the peculiar office 
of the Spirit ; we do not forget that wondrous 
pouring forth of spiritual influence which re- 
sulted in the existence of the Holy Scriptures. 
We do not forget that God, as a universal sove- 
reign, places his blessed Jight in whom he 
pleases, and when he pleases, and qualifies them 
for his own work. No ; we gladly declare our 
unalterable conviction that holy men of old 
spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, 
and that the Holy Scriptures, of a truth, do 
contain an especial revelation of doctrines to be 
believed, and of duties to be practised, and 
bear on themselves the royal stamp of divine 
authority, which never can be removed. We 
are blessed with that holy book ; and are we to 
suppose that, being blessed with so precious, 
and so valuable, and so heavenly a gift, we are 
not to use it diligently, and that we are to sit 
down and expect a spiritual guidance, while we 
disuse the means that are put into our hands ? 
Was that ever the doctrine of Friends ? Never. 
Our early Friends were deeply read in Scrip- 
ture. They knew the Scripture, many of them, 
from beginning to end; they spent days, and 
hours, and weeks, in solitude, and their Bibles 
were their companions, — an observation which 
applies with peculiar force to George Fox, who 
may be in some respects called the founder of 
our society. And Robert Barclay broadly as- 
serts, that if any man proclaims any doctrine 
13 



146 LECTURES ON THE 

or pretends to any morality which is contrary to 
the Scriptures, it is an invention of the devil. 
So say we in the present day. To the test, to 
the outward test, of Scripture, all doctrines, all 
precepts, all opinions, all notions, must be 
brought, and they must stand or fall by that 
test. Our forefathers in the truth were very 
particular in pointing the attention of their 
hearers to those remarkable verses with which 
the Bible is concluded, and which refer, in the 
first instance, clearly to the book of Revela- 
tion ; that, if any man add to the things which 
are written in that book, God will add to him 
the plagues that are written in that book ; and 
if any man take away from the things which 
are written in that book, God will take away 
his part out of the good things which are writ- 
ten in that book, and out of the book of life. 
Here we have the illumination of truth ; here 
we have a clear outward test; but even this 
test must be used in reverent dependence on 
that Holy Spirit which gives faith. And from 
what do the Scriptures themselves derive their 
authority, but from immediate revelation, the 
immediate communication of the mind of God 
to the mind of man ? 

It is not our business to sit and speculate on 
the state of the heathen world : one thing we 
are quite sure of; that it is our bounden duty, 
as Christians, to labour for the benefit of the 
heathen world; and, with regard to their lot 






EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 147 

when they stand before the judgment-seat of 
Christ, we must leave that to the equity and 
mercy of God. But to bring this important 
subject home to our own experience, as we are 
circumstanced here, I am bold to say, that if we 
would be Christians indeed, and really come to 
a practical and saving knowledge of Christian- 
ity, there is but one way, and that is by giving 
ourselves up to the guidance and government 
of the Holy Spirit, by which we are visited and 
enlightened in various degrees, from our very 
infancy. Oh, how inexpressibly important that 
we should maintain this blessed doctrine in all 
its strength and all its integrity ! Would you 
know the truth, my dear young friends ? would 
you understand the doctrines of religion? 
Would you be made sensible of their divine 
authority? Then learn to obey the still small 
voice of your inward teacher. " If any man 
do the will of my Father," said Jesus, "he 
shall know of my doctrine, whether it be of 
God." What can be clearer? Now, my 
young friends are not to expect the fulness of 
light all at once; they are to be diligent in 
reading the Scriptures much, and in private 
prayer ; but, above all, let them take good care 
not to quench the Spirit. Obey the Spirit, 
follow the light of the Spirit of Christ, as it 
shines in your consciences, and you will have 
more light; and when the light comes, it shines 
more and more. It will make very important 



V 
148 LECTURES ON THE 

discoveries to you. It will show you what 
poor, evil, wretched sinners you are; it will 
humble you under a sense of your sins, and then 
you will find a refuge in Jesus Christ, and him 
crucified. The convictions of the Holy Spirit, 
which are often very gradual in their nature, 
go on for many months and years, and, as it 
were, increase with the very growth of the 
young and ingenuous mind. If there be a 
faithful obedience, they lead to conversion; 
they lead to a settled faith in Jesus Christ; 
they lead out of all darkness into all light, and, 
at last, they bring the obedient and believing 
soul to the feet of Jesus; and then what a 
blessed change is wrought in the rational crea- 
ture by faith! By faith we are justified; by 
faith we receive the forgiveness of our sins; 
by faith we are reconciled unto God ; by faith 
we accept the Lord Jesus Christ as our only 
Saviour. And then what is the practical 
knowledge ? why, a much larger effusion of the 
Spirit is poured forth upon the mind. The 
light by which you have been led to Christ is 
redoubled and multiplied after you have come 
to Christ, according to his own words: — "If 
any man thirst, let him come unto me and 
drink. The water that I shall give him shall 
be in him a well of water, springing up into 
everlasting life." I hope this subject is now 
clear to the minds of my young friends. I 
hope you will never let in a single doubt or 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 149 

difficulty upon it. I say it is as clear as the 
noonday sun. 

What is the peculiar privilege of Christian 
believers? What is the very characteristic of 
the new covenant ? Turn to the 31st chapter 
of Jeremiah, and there you will see the charac- . 
teristic of the new covenant: — "After those 
days, saith the Lord, I will make a new cove- 
nant with the house of Judah, and the house of 
Israel : I will write my law upon their hearts, 
and I will put it into their inward parts, and 
they shall not need to teach every man his 
neighbour and brother, saying, Know the Lord, 
for they shall all know me, from the least of 
them unto the greatest, and I will forgive their 
iniquity, and remember their sin no more. ,, 
So that under the glorious gospel dispensation 
we have no need to say every man to his 
brother, "Know the Lord;" we are not to de- 
pend on others' teaching ; we are not to depend 
on human teaching ; we are to have an all- 
sufficient teacher within, — the pre-eminent in- 
fluence of the Holy Spirit, that will teach us 
to know God, that will lead us onward in the 
way of holiness, that will lead us in the way of 
all truth and of all happiness. Here is the 
pre-eminent privilege, here is the true charac- 
teristic of the gospel dispensation. This de-^ 
claration in Jeremiah precisely agrees with 
those gracious promises of our Lord about the 
gift of the Comforter: — "When the Comforter 
13* 



150 LECTURES ON THE 

is come, whom I will send unto you from the 
Father, he shall guide you into all truth." " The 
world seeth him not, neither knoweth him ; but 
ye see him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall 
be in you." "Because I live, ye shall live 
also." "I will come again," our Saviour says, 
in evident reference to the same doctrine : — " I 
will come again, I will see you again ; because 
I live, ye shall live also." Again: — "When 
the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto 
you from the Father, he shall take of mine and 
show it unto you." He shall not speak of 
himself, as I said before ; he shall take of the 
things of Christ and show them to the believer ; 
therefore, let us always keep this in view, — that 
in order rightly to comprehend the doctrines 
of religion, and the things of Christ, they must 
be unfolded to our understandings and im- 
pressed upon our hearts by the immediate act 
of the Comforter, — by the immediate communi- 
cation of the mind of God to man, — by imme- 
diate revelation. Here is the root and ground 
of our principles, and they are plain scriptural 
principles. And not only does this light guide 
into a right view of Christian doctrines, not 
neglecting the Scriptures, but using them ; it is 
also a guide to conduct ; it leads into all holi- 
ness, as well as into all truth. " The anointing 
which you have received from him abideth in 
you," says John, in the second chapter of his 
Epistle; "and ye need not that any man teach 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 151 

you, but as the same anointing teacheth you 
all things, and it is truth and no lie, and even 
as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him." 

I may, perhaps, have gone to almost too 
great a length in unfolding this subject; but I 
do so feel its practical importance, and I do so 
earnestly desire to clear the minds of my young 
friends on this subject, (if I may be made in- 
strumental for the purpose,) knowing, as I do, 
the Holy Scriptures to be of such great im- 
portance to them. May we ever reverence, 
and diligently use. them ! They deal in general 
principles with regard to morals : with regard 
to conduct, we have general principles unfolded 
in the Holy Scriptures. How are we to apply 
those general principles to every act of our 
lives, to every circumstance of each passing 
hour? I say there is an infallible inward 
guide. I say there is not a man among us 
who does not hear a voice behind him, saying, 
"This is the way; walk thou in it." Oh, the 
importance of obeying this voice ! Oh, the 
importance of being found practically faithful 
to the light of the Spirit of Christ, shining in 
our consciences: — " for as many as are led by 
the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. 
and the Spirit itself beareth witness with our 
spirits, that we are his children, and if children, 
then heirs, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with 
Christ;" and may it be so with every soul in 
this assembly ! 



152 LECTURES Otf THE 

When our early Friends arose, it was a time 
marked by great formality in the professing 
church of Christ, and there was far too little 
attention among Christian professors in general 
to the vital, inward work and immediate 
guidance of the Lord's Spirit ; and George Fox 
and his brethren appear to have been remark- 
ably raised up in that day, to testify of this 
inward work, to point out those passages of 
Scripture, and to show that under the gospel 
dispensation we are not to depend on the 
teaching of our fellow-men, but are to come 
under the immediate teaching of Jesus Christ 
himself by his Spirit, according to the ancient 
prophecy, " that every man shall sit under his 
own fig-tree and under his own vine, and none 
shall make him afraid." "All thy children 
shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be 
the peace of thy children ;" and they said, Here 
is a practical principle which will lead men out 
of all that is untrue, and all that is unholy, and 
all that is inconsistent with the true Christian 
character, and will bring them into the genuine 
purity and simplicity of the Christian character, 
in point both of worship and of conduct : here 
is an infallible guide ; here is a heavenly light ; 
there is not one among you who can plead igno- 
rance. They would address themselves to 
thousands of persons, and exhort all to follow 
the light of the Spirit of Christ, which shines 
in their own consciences ; and the Lord would 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 153 

bring them out of all that is evil, and into all 
that is good. By following this blessed princi- 
ple, by insisting upon this plain Scripture doc- 
trine, they soon were led to discard the principle 
of expediency. They found that this infallible 
inw T ard guide would make no compromise; it 
was not bound to what people call expediency; 
that it must have its own way ; that it came 
from God and led to God ; and therefore they 
were constrained to adopt a straight line which 
separated them from those practices of worship, 
or of conduct, which they saw to be inconsist- 
ent with the revealed will of their heavenly 
Father, made known in their hearts by his 
Spirit, — made known in legible characters in 
the pages of Scripture. The two things went 
together and corresponded, as a man's face 
corresponds with the shadow of it in a glass. 
They did not set up one against the other ; I 
hope we never shall. No, the two together 
present a combined effulgence of pure light, 
from the only inexhaustible Fountain of all that 
is holy and all that is true. 

Then how did they apply it to the subject of 
worship? I shyi now endeavour shortly to 
show what it led them into w r ith regard to wor- 
ship, and what it led them into with regard to 
conduct. And first, with regard to worship, 
they found it written in Scripture, that " God 
is a Spirit, and they that worship him must 
worship him in spirit and in truth;" and here 



154 LECTURES OX THE 

was a doctrine which did indeed coincide with 
the immediate dictates of that infallible guide. 
They applied this doctrine to their own worship ; 
they said, It is a very awful and solemn thing 
for persons to gather together under the pro- 
fession of public worship to the living God. 
We are poor, corrupt, sinful creatures : we dare 
not set about this duty in dependence on our 
own wisdom and our own reason ; we dare not 
adopt a form of words which may or may not 
be applicable to the state of our minds ; we 
dare not publicly chant hymns in worship 
which probably may describe a state of mind 
quite different from that of those persons who 
use the words. Neither dare we use extempore 
addresses, or prayers invented by ourselves, — 
prepared beforehand or invented in our own 
strength : public worship is too solemn a thing 
to allow of this. "What can we do then ? What 
does plain truth require of us under these cir- 
cumstances ? We must sit down in reverent 
silence, waiting upon the Lord ; and when he 
calls forth the vocal prayer, when he suggests 
the good preaching, let it come from whatever 
quarter it may, man or woman, let it come un- 
der the power of the Lord's anointing, and in 
the blessed liberty of his own Spirit. And 
thus they were accustomed to gather together 
in reverent silence ; and there was to be felt in 
their meetings the prevalence of divine light, 
and they went forth and preached, not in the 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 155 

words which man's wisdom teacheth, but in the 
demonstration of the Spirit, and of power, ac- 
cording to the manner in which it was bestowed 
upon them. 

Now, one word or two on inspiration : it is 
very important to hold right views on this sub- 
ject. We know that the apostles of our Lord 
Jesus Christ were endued with a wonderfully- 
exalted measure of inspiration ; and the direct, 
divine authority of that which they said and 
that which they wrote was proved by their 
miraculous works. There may be different de- 
grees of the same inspiration, the same imme- 
diate inspiration, in proportion to the needs of 
the church of Christ in different ages ; still the 
same thing. The most wonderful effusion of 
that power was necessary to enable the apostles 
to write those Holy Scriptures which are now 
in our hands. A far lower degree of the very 
same influence, and applied to the mind in the 
same manner, is necessary now to enable the 
Lord's servants rightly to apply those things 
which the apostles have written ; still, it is the 
same principle, it is the same work applied in a 
different manner, according to the needs of the 
church of Christ in different ages. May we 
always hold to this principle ! may it ever be 
understood among us that no ministry is al- 
lowed, in a solemn meeting for solemn worship, 
but that which flows from the immediate influ- 
ence of the Lord's anointing ! and it is this, 



156 LECTURES ON THE 

and this alone, which can enable the preacher 
rightly to. unfold the doctrines of Scripture and 
apply them to the states then present, and of 
the persons who are gathered together on every 
occasion. 

This mode of public worship into which the 
early Friends were led, in obedience, as they 
believed, to the manifestation of the Spirit, 
perfectly agrees with the only description which 
we find in the New Testament of the public 
worship of the primitive Christians. You will 
find that description in the 14th chapter of the 
1st Epistle to the Corinthians. There was nc 
occupant of the pulpit to whom the ministry 
was confined. It was congregational, and all 
to whom the w 7 ord was given were constrained 
to speak that word in their place, giving waj 
one to another, having a due respect one to 
another; and this was what the apostle calls 
"prophecy." That is what we should cal 
"ministry;" for he says that prophecy was in- 
tended for edification, and exhortation, anc 
comfort ; spoken under the immediate influence 
of the Holy Spirit; and when this peculiar in- 
fluence was withdrawn, and when none of those 
gifted persons were called to the exercise of 
those gifts, what must have been the conse- 
quence? It must inevitably have been a state 
of silence ; and there is no basis upon w T hich the 
immediate gifts of the Holy Spirit can be ex- 
ercised in an orderly manner, in the very nature 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 157 

of things, but the basis of silence. And how 
beautifully, my friends, is the propriety of si- 
lence adverted to in that magnificent passage 
of the prophet Isaiah: — "Let all the islands 
keep silence before the Lord, and let the people 
renew their strength." Let them draw near, 
and then let them speak. Let us draw near 
unto judgment. And now I would just observe, 
that, in those primitive days, the gift of pro- 
phecy or of exhortation, edification, and com- 
fort, by the words of living ministry, was not 
restricted to the stronger sex : men and women 
arose in their churches, and spoke in prophecy 
and in preaching, under the immediate influence 
of the Spirit : and this agrees with the prophecy 
of Joel, in 2d chapter: — "I will pour forth my 
Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your 
daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall 
see visions, and your old men shall dream 
dreams. And also upon the servants and hand- 
maids, in those days, will I pour out my Spirit, 
and they shall prophesy." And on the day of 
Pentecost, when there were one hundred and 
twenty persons gathered together, the Holy 
Spirit was poured on them all, and they spake 
•with tongues and prophesied. Now, that was 
one of those miracles which, I apprehend, was 
immediately connected with the great work of 
establishing Christianity in the world; it was a 
directly miraculous gift : but the prophesying — 
that is to say, the preaching for exhortation, 
14 



158 LECTURES ON THE 

for edification, and for comfort, under the same 
immediate influence — was not a gift directly 
miraculous in its nature, but was evidently in- 
tended for the benefit of the church of our 
Lord Jesus. The Apostle Peter expressly says, 
"The promise of the Holy Spirit is unto you 
and unto your children, and to as many as are 
afar off, even to as many as the Lord our God 
shall call." Again, it was said by our Sa- 
viour that the Spirit should abide with them 
forever, for the work of grace, and the impart- 
ing of those gifts which are necessary for the 
maintenance and enlargement of the church 
in all ages. The Holy Spirit abides with the 
church forever ; and whatever is classed under 
these heads belongs to the privilege of Christian 
believers at all times and in any place. And 
may we all of us reverently depend upon this 
influence ! may we know more and more of the 
effusion of the true gifts of the Spirit on the 
church of Christ, — not looking to any thing 
worldly, not looking to any thing of an incon- 
sistent nature, but looking to that which is for 
edification, for exhortation, and for comfort ! 

One operation of this gift is, that it lays 
open the state of the hearers. The apostle 
says, " If a man prophesy, and one comes in 
who is an unbeliever, he is discerned of all; 
[detected of all, is the meaning of it ;] the 
secrets of his heart are made manifest, and so, 
falling down on the ground, he acknowledges 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 159 

that God is in you of a truth." And this is 
one of those operations of the gift of true and 
living ministry, which belongs to its very na- 
ture ; and I would venture to assert, that we 
are still furnished with abundant evidence of it 
within our own bosoms. And may it be so 
more and more ! 

It is said in that same chapter, "Let the 
women keep silence in the churches, and, if 
they would know any thing, let them ask their 
husbands at home." This refers not to the oc- 
currence of praying and prophecy, as the best 
commentators show. Grotius, Locke, Benson, 
and others, severally allow that it refers to 
other points which were common in the church 
of Corinth at that time, and which had been 
borrowed from the Jewish synagogues, of inter- 
rupting the preacher by questions : and the 
women of that time at Corinth had fallen into 
that habit. They interrupted the preacher 
"by questions ; and the apostle commands them 
not to speak in the church, but to wait till they 
came home, and make the inquiry of their 
husbands ; which entirely removes that diffi- 
culty, and I think there is not the smallest 
doubt on the subject. 

These are the views which Friends were led 
to entertain of the nature and operation of the 
Christian ministry in connection with silent 
worship. The ministry, then, must come im- 
mediately from the fountain of the Lord's 



160 LECTURES ON THE 

wisdom. It is as free as the air we breathe. 
Can we buy the winds of heaven ? Can we 
make contracts for the air that we breathe? 
We know we cannot. Can we make con- 
tracts for the gifts of the Spirit ? Impossible. 
" Freely ye have received, freely give." This 
is the root and ground, friends, of our ob- 
jection to the payment, of tithes and other 
ecclesiastical demands. We dare not pay the 
ministers of other congregations ; we dare not 
pull down with one hand what we are building 
up with another ; we do not take up these 
things on political grounds. Oh, my young 
friends, may all of you shun politics, for they 
are dangerous, and sap the very life of religion ; 
but keep to your spiritual principles : and here 
the early Friends found that there was only 
one straight line for them to pursue. It might 
have saved them a great deal of trouble to pay 
their tithes, but they dared not touch the un- 
clean thing ; they dared not do any thing that 
contradicted the principle, "Freely ye have 
received, freely give ;" and therefore they 
said, We must be passive ; we can do nothing : 
we obey the law actively and cheerfully when 
we can do it with a safe conscience towards 
God ; we know it is our duty : when we cannot, 
We will be passive ; we do not fight against it; 
we do not wrestle against it by vain means ; 
we have nothing to do but to sit down and be 
passive, and suffer the law to take its course; 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 161 

and thereby we bear a plain and most con- 
spicuous testimony to the freedom and purity 
of the gospel dispensation. But, although we 
dare not make contracts for that which is free 
in its very nature, which is contradictory to the 
principles of the New Testament, we are fully 
aware that while our ministers are engaged 
in actual service, leaving their families, their 
homes, and their business, the labourer is 
worthy of his meat. And some of us can tes- 
tify that an abundant supply of all their needs, 
in all circumstances, is never denied them. 
We gladly and joyfully bestow them. And so 
you see how one thing is balanced by another : 
we are not for any thing unreasonable ; we are 
not for high and lofty things ; we want no 
airy speculations ; we only want plain, New 
Testament, scriptural, original, primitive truth. 
That is all we want : and may we have it, and 
have it ever ! 

These were the views which the early Friends 
took on the subject of worship ; and not only 
so, but they found themselves restricted. They 
saw another thing in the New Testament : — 
that the gospel dispensation was purely spiritual 
in its nature, and that the whole system, of the 
ceremonial law was abolished by the death of 
Christ. The law and the worship of Moses 
was a system of shadows and types t the wor- 
ship under the gospel dispensation is a system 
of realities, of substance ; it is spiritual in its 
14* 



162 LECTURES ON THE 

very nature. They believed that all things 
purely ceremonial in religion and the worship 
of God were forever and at once abolished by 
the death, the propitiatory death, of Jesus 
Christ. They knew that various ceremonies 
were practised for a time in the church ; many 
Jewish practices continued for a time ; for our 
Lord dealt gently with his disciples, and did 
not impose upon them any sudden or violent 
changes ; he only put them in possession of 
principles of which those changes would be the 
ultimate result, and on this ground Friends 
were led to assert, and they still do assert, that 
the only baptism permanently belonging to the 
gospel dispensation is the baptism of the 
Spirit : and they pointed to various passages 
by which their doctrine was enforced and con- 
firmed ; for example, by the Apostle Peter, * 
when speaking of the antediluvians, and of 
their being saved by water, he says, " The like 
figure whereunto, even baptism, doth now save 
us," (and here I should say that in the Greek 
it is not the "like figure," but the "antitype/* 
or that which corresponds to it, is the proper 
meaning,) — " doth now save us, even baptism." 
What is it ? What is it not ? Not the putting 
away the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a 
good conscience towards God, by the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus Christ, by the spiritual power of 
the risen and glorified Jesus. This is what 
Friends held to be the only true Christian 



EVIDENCES OF CHKISTIANITI. 163 

baptism ; and the Apostle Paul speaks plainly 
of the same baptism, for he says, " There is 
one Lord, one faith, and one baptism." Now, 
I know of nothing fairer than allowing a man 
to be an interpreter of himself: and what says 
he elsewhere ? "By one Spirit we are baptized 
into one body:" therefore we must conclude 
that the only baptism which he recognised was 
the baptism of the Spirit. Turn again to the 
Epistle to the Corinthians, and there he says, 
"I baptized none of you but Crispus and 
Gaius, lest any man should say that I had bap- 
tized in mine own name. And I baptized also 
the household of Stephanas, beside I know not 
whether I baptized any other ; for Christ sent 
me not to baptize." Here is a direct assertion. 
Now, friends, turn to that passage in Matthew 
where our Saviour, before he left this earth, 
commanded his disciples to go and make dis- 
ciples of all nations, (that is the meaning of 
the words,) baptizing them into the name of 
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost. This command was addressed to the 
apostles. Was Paul a partaker of the apos- 
tolic mission or not ? Undoubtedly he was. If 
baptism in water was the meaning of this com- 
mand, is it possible that Paul should say that 
lie was sent not to baptize but to preach the 
gospel, not in the enticing words of man's wis- 
dom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit 
and of power ? We believe that when the gos- 



164 LECICBES ON THE 

pel is preached in the demonstration of the 
Spirit and of power, it is made the blessed means 
of truly baptizing the people into the name of 
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy- 
Ghost. We are well aware that the apostles 
were accustomed to water-baptism, as they 
were to many other Jewish practices ; and 
some persons have supposed that they prac- 
tised it in consequence of this command ; but 
the apostle contradicts that ; and a proof that 
they did not do it.in consequence of this com- 
mand is* found in this : — that they were accus- 
tomed to use this rite long before the command 
was issued, as we find in the 3d and 4th 
chapters of John's Gospel. It was in fact a 
common Jewish practice, used from time im- 
memorial almost, — at any rate, from the first 
covenant of the law. They were commanded 
to wash their clothes as a rite of purification ; 
that is, they dipped the whole body, with 
clothes on, and afterwards when any person 
was proselyted to the Jewish religion, becom- 
ing a Jew instead of a Gentile, when he became 
a proselyte to the whole system of Judaism, 
he was baptized invariably, as a matter of 
course, as is plainly declared by Jewish writers, 
and described in all cases, — particularly by 
Maimonides, one of the most learned Jews. 
He lived in Spain, in the twelfth century ; and 
so learned was he (his name was Moses) that 
the Jews have a common saying, that " From 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 165 

Moses to Moses there is nobody like Moses." 
In his works we find a description of the way 
in which the ancient Jews were accustomed to 
be baptized. Their practice was to dip under 
the water, signifying that the person who was 
baptized was transferred from one system of 
faith to another, — the new system being the 
purer of the two. John therefore baptized as 
a matter of course ; he baptized into the faith, 
and the Messiah to come. There was one step 
of religion ; the disciples therefore baptized as 
a matter of course : there was another step of 
religion ; they baptized into faith in the Mes- 
siah who was already come : but Jesus himself, 
our great Pattern, whom it is always safe to 
follow, though he submitted to the baptism of 
John, because he lived under the law, yet, as 
the Institutor and divine Founder of a new 
religion, he baptized not; for, when the baptism 
of the disciples of Jesus was spoken of, the 
apostle expressly declared, " Howbeit Jesus 
himself baptized not, but his disciples." Now, 
let no man pretend to say that we deny bap- 
tism. I believe there is no society in the world 
that more deeply feels its importance. But 
what is the baptism ? Let us hear what it is in 
the words of the highest authority, the words 
of the Baptist himself : — " I indeed baptize 
you with water unto repentance, but he that 
cometh after me is mightier than I, whose 
shoes I am not worthy to unloose : he shall 



166 LECTURES ON THE 

baptize you with the Holy Ghost ;" and, 
friends, remember, oh, remember, that you 
never can be living members of the church of 
Christ, unless you are inwardly baptized by 
the Holy Ghost, — the washing of regeneration 
in the receiving of the Holy Ghost ; and, while 
Christians are bound to exercise all charity one 
towards another, in reference to the outward 
rite, — while I have no desire to interfere with 
the religious opinions of any man living, — I 
am sure of one thing : that it is the duty of 
every Christian minister to lay all stress upon 
the baptism which alone can save, — even on 
the baptism of Christ himself, which is with 
the Holy Ghost and with fire. 

Then a few sentences on the subject of the 
Lord's supper. Do we deny the Lord's sup- 
per ? No, friends, we rejoice in the Lord's 
supper. We turn to the 6th chapter of John's 
Gospel, and there we find the subject eluci- 
dated; there we find, "Except ye eat the flesh 
and drink the blood of the Son of man, ye have 
no life in you;" and I would ask, Is this a 
ceremony ? Is this an outward observance ? 
We are sure it is not, for our Lord, in explain- 
ing it, says, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth ; 
the flesh profiteth nothing ; the words which I 
speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are 
life." Now, it is important that we should 
understand this passage ; it is a figurative pas- 
sage, and the figure lieth not in the flesh and 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 167 

blood, but in the eating and drinking ; we eat 
and drink the flesh and blood of Christ, when 
we imbibe Christ crucified as our only Saviour, 
and our only hope of glory, by a living faith ; 
when we place our soul's reliance on the flesh 
and blood of Christ, on the body which was 
broken and on that blood which was shed for 
us. This I apprehend to be the true meaning 
of the passage ; and by that faith we are brought 
into possession of the Holy Spirit, which rises 
within us unto life everlasting, and is our very 
life. May we all eat the flesh and drink the 
blood of the Son of man, and then we shall be 
partakers of the true, needful, and essential 
supper of the Lord ! 

With regard to the practice of commemo- 
rating the death of Christ, which prevailed 
among the early Christians; when our Saviour 
said, " This do in remembrance of me," when 
he handed around the cup and brake the bread, 
this took place at a meal; they actually drank 
the wine and eat the bread for the nourishment 
of their bodies ; and when the early Christians 
met together from house to house, on usual oc- 
casions, and brake their bread in one another's 
company, in the sweet fellowship of the gospel 
and for the refreshment of their bodies, they 
reverently called to mind the body that was 
broken and the blood that was shed for them. 
Here was no ceremony in worship ; here was no 
practice of the Jewish observance, as a type in 



168 LECTURES ON THE 

worship. It was indeed a Jewish practice, be- 
cause they were accustomed so to break their 
bread and drink their wine ; but, friends, it was 
a very different thing in its nature from what 
has since taken place. They gathered together 
at their social meals, and afterwards at what 
they called their love-feasts, and while they re- 
freshed their bodies they called Christ to their 
remembrance ; and I hope that we shall never 
be found in the practice of any formal observ- 
ance of any description. But of one thing I 
feel quite confident : — that we cannot too often 
remember the body that was broken and the 
blood that was shed for us ; and I wish we may 
always be reminded of them by the very food 
that we eat. I wish my dear young friends, 
when they are partaking of the natural refresh- 
ment of their bodies, were more often reminded 
of that spiritual food which is needful for the 
soul. Oh, it is precious to be so reminded; 
and I cannot avoid giving the words of one of 
our friends, who said that she never took her 
meals on any occasion, without secretly calling 
to mind the body that was broken and the^blood 
that was shed for her. I feel full unity with 
such a spirit. This simple practice, which pre- 
vailed among the early Christians, and of which 
Pliny makes mention about the end of the first 
century, of their often taking a social supper 
or meal together, in the course of the second 
century was changed and transferred to their 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 169 

public worship, and became what it is now, — a 
purely ceremonial ordinance ; not the refresh- 
ment of their bodies, not the social meal, not 
the Christian fellowship, as on former occasions, 
but a type, a shadow, a ceremony in worship, 
and, as we view it, a plain recurrence to the 
principles of the worship of the old law, which 
was in the shadow, in the type, in the figure, 
and not in the reality and in the substance. 

While, therefore, we do not in the least de- 
gree condemn our Christian neighbours, but 
leave every man to be fully persuaded in his 
own mind, we are deeply convinced that we 
should weaken the foundation of true spiritual 
worship by recurring to any ceremonial obser- 
vations or rite of any kind whatever. " God 
is a Spirit, and they that worship him must 
worship him in spirit and in truth." The word 
truth means reality there ; not in the shadow, 
not in the type, not in the figure, but in the 
actual reality and the substance of the thing. 
This is the meaning of the words, and here is 
the broad principle on which we stand, and I 
hope shall stand steadfastly ; for it is a princi- 
ple open, clear, obvious, scriptural, founded on 
Jesus Christ, and on him crucified. 

Such are the views which Friends entertain 
on the subject of worship. And now, shortly, 
with regard to conduct. They dared not aban- 
don their public worship: theirs was a straight 
line that could not give way to the principle of 
15 



170 LECTURES ON THE 

expediency , and when, in consequence of the 
terrors of the law, the dissenters of that day 
met only in private places, where they were 
hidden and protected from the arm of the law, 
Friends said, No; it is our duty to worship 
God, and we must go straight forward in the 
work ; though we may be trampled down by the 
soldiery, or driven to prison by the magistrates, 
we will bear the plainest testimony, and take 
all the consequences. And the consequence 
was, that they were led in multitudes to prison, 
and deep were their sufferings on this and on 
other accounts ; but the joy of the Lord was 
their strength, and in the depths of the noisome 
prison-house were often heard in that day songs 
of living melody, and praise in the honour and 
for the glory of Him who bought them with his 
blood. Oh ! friends, how should we stand a day 
like this ? How would my young friends stand 
it ? I give them the credit of believing that 
most of them would stand it well. I believe 
that they know their principles too well to turn 
their backs upon them, and I hope what has 
passed to-night may still further confirm their 
views. A day of trouble may probably come. 
Oh that they may be steadfast ! I wish that 
the description which is given of George Fox, 
by Thomas Ellwood, may be applicable to them. 
He says, he was vigilant in the truth, bold in 
asserting it, patient in suffering for it, unwea- 
ried in bearing testimony to it, and immovable 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 171 

as a rock. There is one point of conduct. 
Now take another. They refused to swear : 
the world said it was expedient to swear, and 
that it was quite necessary for the purposes of 
justice. The Friends said, No, verily, the law 
of God forbids it : Christ commands us not to 
swear at all; the words are clear: — "I say unto 
you, Swear not at all." In vain was every so- 
phistical argument in their view, when weighed 
against those scriptural words ; in vain was it 
said, that men might swear in courts of justice, 
and on no other occasion; it was the principle 
of the old law, that the Jew should not forswear 
himself in their courts of justice. " But I say 
unto you, Swear not at all." Therefore, Friends 
acted upon plain principles, and in consequence 
of their refusal to swear, they were subjected 
again and again to the most severe sufferings, 
because they found themselves constrained by 
the love of Christ to go in the straight line. 
Then, again, they dared not fight ; they not 
only objected to offensive warfare, but likewise 
to defensive warfare ; they objected to both, and 
they said that the whole question was settled 
in three words : — " Love your enemies." They 
said, it was impossible that any man should love 
his enemy and shoot him at the same moment. 
They said that Christ their Saviour, their Lord, 
had settled the question ; therefore it was not 
for them to consider whether it was expedient, 
or whether the world called it necessary ; they 



172 LECTURES ON THE 

followed those words, "Love your enemies," 
and they were led to that love by the imme- 
diate guidance and government of the Lord's 
anointing ; the law was written in their hearts, 
and they dared not resist this combined in- 
fluence and authority ; the only thing that they 
could do was to adopt the lamb-like character 
of the Lord who bought them, and to be willing 
to return good for evil and suffer patiently. 

One more point of a practical nature. They 
found themselves restricted, by the same un- 
varying spirit, from using the common compli- 
mentary forms of language ; they saw that it 
was inconsistent with Christian simplicity and 
Christian integrity; inconsistent with the ex- 
ample of Christ and of his apostles, and incon- 
sistent with the language of Scripture itself; 
and therefore they dared not to do it ;' and in 
consequence of their using the "thee" and 
"thou" instead of a plural, and abstaining from 
all those complimentary formalities which are 
familiar to us all, they were often exposed to 
very severe sufferings, in consequence of their 
faithfulness to this smaller doctrine. They 
found the anointing of the Lord makes no com- 
promise ; that it must have full sway ; the 
Spirit of the Lord brings down the spirit of 
man. And again, in their attire, they dared 
not adorn themselves with gold, embroidery, or 
lace, or the putting on of splendid apparel, as 
described by the apostle. No; the ornament 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 173 

of a meek and quiet spirit was the only orna- 
ment -which they allowed, the only ornament 
which the New Testament allowed. They 
dared not put on those outward ornaments 
which only gratify personal vanity and the 
follies of the world, and do not become true 
Christian simplicity and lowliness. By keep- 
ing to this principle, they soon became singular 
in their appearance : they did not adopt the 
custom for singularity; that was not their 
object; they obeyed Christian simplicity both 
in tongue and in dress, and, as fashions 
changed from time to time, they became sin- 
gular. They did not dare to adopt the fashions 
of the world, which was demanded of them. 

Now, all these things rest upon a plain New 
Testament ground ; and my dear young friends, 
I do beseech you, as an unworthy elder brother, 
not to forsake our Christian testimonies in these 
particulars ; for I can. say, from long and 
extensive observation, that they are greatly 
blessed to every young person, and that when 
they throw off any of these restrictions in tongue 
or dress, it almost invariably happens that it 
is an inlet to the world and to sin. We are to 
keep out of the way of temptation, — to keep 
under the restrictions of the cross ; and I will 
venture to say that there is not a young man 
in this assembly who, consistently with the 
plain dress and tongue, would dare to take his 
plain coat and his thee and thou into the haunts 
15* 



174 LECTURES ON THE 

of worldly assemblies ; therefore it is an im- 
portant ground. I entreat you not to disregard 
these things ; our early Friends suffered deeply 
on account of these things, and their line was 
a line of straightforward duty, under the gui- 
dance and government of the Lord's anointing. 
I do not want to exalt them as patterns ; I 
hold out no pattern to any man but our Lord 
Jesus Christ ; I hold out no system of doctrines 
or precepts but those of the Holy Scriptures : 
here is the ground on which I stand. And I 
do not want vainly to exalt the early Friends. 
I know that they had infirmities like other men ; 
but I do say that the goodness of the tree is 
amply proved by the goodness of the fruit ; I 
do say that those principles were plain Chris- 
tian principles; that they are the principles 
of the New Testament itself, and nothing more 
nor less than a consistent, harmonious, and 
well-established view of the true, spiritual, and 
comprehensive glorious gospel dispensation ; 
and were I to refer any of you to a book which 
should contain a full development of our re- 
ligious principles, the book should be the New 
Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ ; and my firm belief is, that the more 
my beloved young friends are enabled to search 
the New Testament, and to enter into its spirit 
and meaning, under the guidance of the Lord's 
Spirit, which giveth faith, — and the more they 
endeavour in all their conduct and conversa- 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 175 

tion to obey their inward teacher and to follow 
the light of the Spirit of Christ in their own 
hearts, — the more they will become confirmed 
in those religious principles in which they were 
educated ; the more they will cleave in their 
spirits to the law and to the testimony as they 
have been always held among us. Again I 
would observe that I have no sectarian views. 
I think nothing of any name under heaven, as 
a name to which we are to attach our religious 
faith, but the name of Jesus. I have no unity 
with those who would be baptized into the name 
of Paul, into the name of Apollos, or into the 
name of Cephas. No ; there is but one truth, 
there is but one church, even the universal 
church of our Lord Jesus Christ: and may 
this church be awakened from her slumbers, 
may she arise and shake herself from the dust, 
may she array herself in her beautiful garments, 
may she be clothed with the sun, and may the 
inferior light of the moon of mere human 
reason and speculation be under her feet, and 
may she be strong and glorious in her law, 
until the glory of God shall cover the earth, as 
the waters cover the sea ! 

Perhaps we cannot separate more comfort- 
ably than under the solemn feelings which are 
now created. I trust that fervent love one 
towards another pervades among us, and that 
love for the cause of truth will more and more 
distinguish us as individuals, and as a body. 



176 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



I bid all my beloved young friends farewell in 
the Lord Jesus Christ ; and may we remember 
one another ; may you remember me for good 
when you draw near to the throne of grace ; 
may we intercede one for another, in the name 
of Jesus ! The Lord be with you, and prosper 
you in all your ways. Farewell ! 



THE END. 



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